Unweaving
by ArgentNoelle
Summary: When Ciel realizes the lies that Claude has made him believe and the fact that Alois Trancy's soul is sharing his body, he and Sebastian must undertake a quest to separate their cinematic records and restore his memories... no matter what the cost. [AU from season 2 episode Zero Butler]
1. Part 1: Along Came a Spider

**A/N:** I'm really excited to post this story! It's the longest story I've ever written so far... I've finally completed a novel-length fic, which I've wanted to do for years. It should probably come out to be 37 chapters all told. As a warning, this story is rated for dark themes primarily and some cursing, but there is a rape scene in chapter three. [I'll put more details in a note at that chapter.] It's very necessary to the plot and sets up character dynamics that will have repercussions for the rest of the story; but there will be **no other** sexual scene in the fic.

 **primary pairings:** Sebastian/Ciel (very slow burn); Claude/Alois  
 **pov:** rotating

Despite the dark subject matter at some points, the whole point of the story is really to serve as a fix-it for Season 2 and the ending of the anime, which I found to be incredibly depressing. I wanted an opportunity for Sebastian and Ciel to be able to work together again as a duo, instead of seeming so disconnected the whole time. So the story will (hopefully) not be total angst!

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* * *

What think you, if he were convey'd to bed,  
Wrapp'd in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,  
A most delicious banquet by his bed,  
And brave attendants near him when he wakes,  
Would not the beggar then forget himself?

— _The Taming of the Shrew_

 **Part One:** _Along Came a Spider..._

* * *

{i.}

There were slippery magicks in every loop and knot of the crochet web Claude had created to ensnare the Phantomhive boy, lying asleep and defenseless in his arms, his face taut with pain, uncertainty and loss even as he dreamed; and with every step those magicks pulled themselves tighter around him, burrowed whisper-thin threads into his skin that made him keen and whimper. And so Claude bore him, every step in his own arms, watching the play with parted, wondering mouth and cruel, gold-glitter eyes. When they stepped over the threshold of the Trancy manor the boy stirred, eyes blinking open to gaze in bewildered fancy at the ceilings that spun dizzyingly above him. "W...where are we?" he managed, at last, to slur.

"Home, my lord," Claude answered, with a quiet, soothing voice, and the boy's brow furrowed. "Are we?" he asked at last, lost, uncertain, and sounding more like a small child than his full thirteen years of age.

"Yes, we are," Claude said, and cradled the frail body closer, breathing in the sharpness of sweat and fear and the pure, sweet note of the boy's unquenchable soul. "You remember it, do you not? And here…" he pushed open the room of his late master's, with its draperies of lavender and rose, silhouetted by the dying sun; the striped pink bedspread and the rug of red and gold, the light honey-wood of the bed and dresser. It was a child's room in many ways, for Alois Trancy had been in many ways a child, though not in others. It was a bright room, gay and merry, as bright and sugar-sweet as candy—and as capable of making ill, if over-supped. "Your room, Highness; it has been made waiting."

"My room? No—" at last the boy began to struggle, weakly. "It isn't right. Sebastian—"

"Yes... it's such a pity about Sebastian, isn't it?" Claude asked, and the blue-eyed boy blinked up at him, his strength of will diverted with confusion. "Who would have ever suspected that the demon who promised to bring your parents' killers to justice would in fact be that very killer? Such a betrayal goes against the very nature of the contract itself." He smiled, slightly, and with a hint of hunger; and something in his expression made the boy's eyes narrow. Claude didn't wait to see what thoughts might take seed behind those canny eyes, but stroked his hand along the boy's, touching the angry red of the the ring upon it, letting the soul of Alois flare up, bringing to that mind a confusion of jumbled memories, the horrors of his own past combined with those he had never experienced. The boy shuddered, his breath shortening and eyes growing wide in remembered agony until tears blinked to life on the edges of every perfect dark eyelash.

Claude let the boy go to slide heavy and drugged to the bed, the white, white web spread out around him.

"Are you well, my lord?" Claude asked at last, watching that vacant gaze come to latch onto his as he slowly slid his hand away from the ring. "What troubles you? Memories?"

"Yes," the word came out, weakly, and trembling he flinched away from the gentle hand Claude rested on his shoulder. "Don't—don't touch me…"

"Your Highness?" And let that red flare up, that anger and betrayal, that familiarity all housed in the prison for his former master's soul. "What was that?" he moved, still slowly, that hand along his arm, along his collarbone with creeping fingers. For he had had time enough to work upon _this_ boy's soul, when he had last had it in his grasp, to let the miasma of this cursed house slip into the spaces where his eyes and mouth would be, to whisper into the recesses of his ears.

"I said— … …Touch me." The desires of another soul worked upon this, stranding all complaint, all reason. Those eyes, still confused, but wanting; the foetid breath slipping from that exquisite mouth. Such a familiar sight, this desperation, and yet so different! That body struggling against its natural instincts to lean toward him, to clutch those shaking hands about him, soul screaming in instinctive horror, and Claude chuckled, hand slipping lower. "I will, master. If you ask of me… anything."

.

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	2. Chapter 2

{ii.}

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The sun had already risen, cruel and confusing, when Ciel awoke the next morn; Claude accustomed to waking his master later than was Ciel's wont. _What is happening to me?_ Ciel thought, as he went down the tally of all that was wrong: Sebastian, Sebastian, and the lack of him. There seemed to be a persistent fuzz around his head, dead-ends where there should have been connections, blank spaces where information and memory should have resided. Was Sebastian responsible for all that, or was it the fault of the asylum he had been taken to, where the doctors could do as they wished with drugs and mind-twisting, whisper-soft voices, trying to convince the earl Trancy to desist in his madness, that blood on his hands, that mangled eye—no! That was the trap, that had been the web in which Sebastian meant to take him… he was not Alois; no, he never had been, he was Ciel, and Claude, that creeping, untrustworthy demon had rescued him.

It was like a blow, like a seeping, ever-lasting wound in his chest, that betrayal, that unmotivated betrayal… why? If only he could ask, but when Ciel thought of opening his mouth to call Sebastian's name, to lift this agony of wonder, a panic flew through his veins. _Don't ask him, you musn't, for he won't lie to you—he loves you, doesn't he? Sebastian-Claude. Let's play pretend, look out from under coquettish eyes, for he won't leave you; you can make him stay forever._ Ciel watched himself in the mirror with a critical eye, as though trying to pick out the flaws in a disguise; Claude, obsequious, as he ought to be, kneeling behind him, speaking honeyed words, obviously grasping. Make another contract? Not with anyone, not for anything. Not after this still-unsolved mystery, this nagging question for the queen's watchdog, this still-fresh scent of crime. What a fool, this man! What a pathetic excuse for a butler! Spending so much time fawning over him he could hardly find the time to do his duty. Oh, it grated.

And the mocking sight of roses, white-petalled like the ones Sebastian kept year-round blooming, only to make real his wishes; like those purple flowers, just as his brother used to bring, before Sebastian killed him and the whole town with him… something was wrong, something hanging in the air, some particle of madness that had infected the whole place, down to the quiet, flinching maid and her lavender dress.

Alois, still his enemy, even in death, had infected him, slipped his thoughts and memories inside Ciel's own, but how? How else could he know the pain of that mortal wound, that languorous last afternoon under the uncaring trees; how else could he remember that unfinished kiss, that—that traitor, Claude, who killed him, and yet would not take his soul?

 _That traitor, Claude? And yet Claude loved him! But why… why would he deny him, Alois, the one whose soul belonged to him and him alone, but happily spread his legs like a whore for this Phantomhive? That bastard, that ungrateful, evil demon, not even satisfied with the meal he cooked himself—ha!_ It makes the bitter sting of tears well up, and Ciel's feet grow tripping and uncertain, trying to avoid that harsh emotion… What pathetic notion was this, what intrusion of childish thought into his cold ratiocination? Ciel rebelled against it, this foreignness. Something was wrong, and it resided in him like a worm, this other consciousness, this impulse driving him to passions and violence. That fairytale neatness, that unconditional rescue… but why? _Why, Claude?_

It was a thought united in the strength of two souls, a sudden uncomfortable doubt. It made Ciel's footsteps light, it seemed to guide his way throughout the manor, and it drove them, burning with the shared purpose of those who knew the single-nature of revenge.

And when they saw Claude again— _it is I who has the right to ask_ , Alois thought.

No, Ciel thought, trying vainly to stop that other from the power he had latched onto, this enemy almost as dangerous as Claude himself, but, laughing, Alois rose up in force, overturning all Ciel's power with his own logic… _Claude will explain himself, he will… and he will say he loves me, and me alone._

 _._

 _._

 _._


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter warnings:** rape. (See end of chapter for more details)

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{iii.}

 _What a fool Ciel had been, to think he could control this body forever!_ Alois thought, legs kicking aimlessly as Claude carefully pulled off his shoes and stockings. _He is mine now, just as Claude promised—oh Claude, you never did break our contract… but did you mean to give this to me, or was that flicker of uncertainty I saw in your eyes a clue, a truth about your_ real _affections?_

"You undress me like it's any other day," Alois said, at last, "and yet you killed me, and this isn't even my body." He looked up, frowning, as Claude stood up to pull off his shirt, unfolding his patterned nightgown and sliding it over his shoulders, calmly, without lingering, pulling the drawstring ribbon closed. "You're quiet," he continued. "Won't you speak to me, Claude? Why did you do it?"

Claude did not answer. He only stood before Alois and watched, with that curiously blank expression that always made Alois uncertain. What did Claude think of behind that empty face? Or did he think anything at all? It gave Alois the shivers, and that made him cross.

"I'm beginning to wonder," Alois said, in a low and dangerous voice, "if you even _want_ me here. Is that it, Claude? You don't even seem happy to see me. Oh no, you just want _Ciel Phantomhive_ , don't you?" he spat.

"Master," Claude said, with that conciliatory voice. "You've had a trying week, and you're tired. Let me put you to bed—"

"And in the morning," Alois wondered out loud, "Who do you expect to wake up?"

Claude paused; under the placating expression Alois caught a glimpse of something more considering. It was a cold look, but something in the glitter of his golden eyes filled Alois with relief. In the familiarity of his regard, the faint surprise of that considering gaze, Alois recognized some of the value he had become used to being assessed with—that fleeting thing that somehow seemed to slip further from his grasp the more he reached after it, like fairy-gold turning to dry, dead leaves in his palm.

"Hmph," Alois said, and narrowed his eyes. He brought his wrist to his mouth, licking and sucking at the juncture, watching Claude's unmoved expression, and then, suddenly, he bit down into his skin, breaking it and staining his arm and teeth with blood. He noticed a reaction from Claude then; an almost imperceptibly indrawn breath; and his eyes zeroed in on the red, sparkling drops.

 _Still effective then…_ Alois mused. _But is it only because of_ him _?_ "Do you like that, Claude?" he asked. He studied the wound with abstracted interest, and put it to his own mouth, watching how Claude didn't look away, didn't move at all. "I don't know what you see in it myself," Alois continued. "Blood always tastes rather strange to me, but you love it, don't you? Or is that only if it belongs to Ciel Phantomhive?"

"All blood contains a hint of the soul's flavor," Claude answered. "As such, it is quite alluring."

"Really?" Alois said, with sudden energy; everything seemed to crystallize into sharp, bright focus, and he leaned forward with wide grin. "What is it like? Tell me, Claude." He could hardly keep still, but made sure to pay attention to the answer his butler gave.

"It is like the smell of exquisite food," Claude said slowly. "Tantalizing, aromatic... an intangible promise of a taste, a satiation that is to come." He had taken a step forward as he spoke, almost unconsciously, and he seemed lost in thought, drawn forward against his will by some soft siren-song.

"So you smell my soul in this blood?" Alois asked.

"Yes, Your Highness."

Alois frowned. "And Ciel Phantomhive's?" he said.

"Yes, Your Highness." Such an obedient butler Alois had! Why, one would almost think he hadn't cuckolded him not one night past, that he hadn't attempted to _kill_ the one that pulled his puppet-strings!

Alois scowled. "Taste it."

"...Master?" Claude stopped, almost uncertain.

"What, don't you want to?" he asked, his voice sharp, sharp like thorns.

"It would not be wise," Claude said, standing close by the foot of the bed, but there was a hitch in his breathing, and he did not look away from the stained red marks.

"I don't care," Alois replied. "Do I have to order you?" He held out his arm. At last, Claude stepped forward to sit on the edge of the bed, and he took Alois' arm in his hand, running his fingers across the bite, and then gouging his fingers into it, letting more blood to seep free.

"Phantomhive has such thin arms," Alois observed, watching. "He's short, too—it's so strange; like I'm stuck in one of my old memories."

Claude lowered his face to Alois's arm and licked gently at the wrist, his eyes fluttering closed as he let out a sigh.

"You enjoy it, don't you?"

Claude didn't answer, only continued to mouth at Alois' skin, his teeth scraping bloody trails along the inside of his arm.

"That's enough," Alois said at last, pulling his arm away, and watching with amusement the way Claude seemed hard-pressed to restrain himself from following, his usual composure shot.

"Then… I shall be going," Claude said at last.

"Not quite yet," Alois said, laughing. "I want you to fuck me first."

Alois could see the moment that residual contentment, that floating air vanished from Claude's body. "Is that an order as well, master?" he asked, in that monotone that he knew made Alois angry.

"Why should I have to order you, Claude? You're mine, aren't you?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

"And yet I don't see you moving. Why? Are you waiting for someone else? You're a fool if you think he'll make a contract with you, you know," Alois said, leaning forward to speak, warm and lowly, into Claude's ear, and he leaned back with a bright smile. "He hates you."

"Hate is a strong motivator," Claude admitted, "but desperation can be even stronger."

"That's always how you do it, isn't it?" Alois said, almost to himself. "Wait for someone to be so desperate they don't care _what_ they do."

Claude watched him. "That is how deals work, Your Highness," he said.

"Do you want to taste my blood again?" Alois asked. He drew one finger through the bloody mess on his arm and reached out to Claude's mouth, tracing it over his lips, and Claude's tongue darted out to touch his finger, slowly sucking away every last drop of blood.

"You can have more," Alois said, bringing his hand back and into his own mouth; he imagined he could taste Claude's spit on it. "If you fuck me."

"You're being… quite… tempting, Your Highness," Claude said, the words trailing out with difficulty.

"Are you desperate yet, Claude?" Alois asked. The butler was still, but with difficulty; there was tension on every limb and his pupils were blown wide and dark. Alois had always been good at this game; even before he had met Claude; if he wished it, there was no one who would refuse him.

Alois reached up to his shoulder, pulling the drawstring-ribbon loose to let down the edge of his nightgown. He played his fingers across his chest, letting himself become more and more aroused as he stared into the darkness of his demon's eyes. Then Claude leaned forward, catching his arms in a bruising grip and twisting them above Alois' head as he pushed him down into the bed. Alois giggled, feeling Claude's hardness against his leg and the rasp of his tongue in the blood of his arm, and down to his shoulderblade, biting with his serrated fangs. His free hand reached under Alois' nightgown to tease at his entrance, never quite pushing a finger inside.

"More, more, damn you Claude," Alois gasped.

Claude chuckled darkly. "You must be patient, Your Highness. This body is not accustomed to such things."

"Oh," Alois said, "do you think I care about that?" he rocked up and down, trying vainly to reach for the elusive hand, which dipped in and out of its own rhythm. "What's a little pain—it never lasts—" what's a little pain if it means he could have what he wanted? Alois had never known how to wait, and why should he? He deserved to have his wishes granted with promptness...

Claude slipped one finger inside, and Alois gasped, pushing himself into the pain in spite of that, waiting it out, letting his own pleasure circle.

/

It was strange to see on this new face, Claude thought, this Phantomhive, there was something almost ugly about it, a sluggish wrongness; the taste of Alois' soul ill-fitting behind the warm stormy blue of the other's eyes; for a moment Claude felt a fleeting regret for the arctic ice of Alois' own, and his platinum hair which had faded to a dull and lustreless black.

"Do you like dark hair?" Alois asked, sensing his regard. "You must;" he continued, "you've made yourself that way…"

"I have no preference for such accidental attributes as the body," Claude said. "It is the soul that excites me."

"You'll have enough of that," Alois said. "I have Ciel Phantomhive now; he's mine, just like you promised… you can eat me whenever you want…" his words were broken, punctuated by the unsteady racing of his breath as Claude added another finger, scissoring them in and out, and then reaching his head down to the tip of Alois' member to lick his tongue along it.

 _Eat your soul?_ Claude thought, disdainfully— _hardly_. _I've caught sight of better game._ It slipped in and out of his senses, that tantalizing fragrance, that unique blend of soul, blocked from him —by the _other_ contract that still existed and the overpowering nature of Alois's soul that filled his blood and sweat and, when Claude had worked Alois' arching, desperate body open and sheathed himself inside, the come released with Alois' small, desperate cry. Claude continued to rock himself in and out of Alois' hole until the pleasure-sounds had changed to pained, smiling whimpers; "Oh, you're so cruel to me Claude," Alois gasped, his sweat-damp skin shaking with oversensitivity, his body twisting as though unsure if he wanted to get away or to come even closer.

Claude grinned. The sight of such willing pain was much more of a pleasure to him than mere sex, and when he reached down to lick a few flakes of now-drying blood off Alois' arm he felt himself chasing that elusive feeling as though he might be able to catch up with it himself.

Eventually, he slowed. The game was fun enough, but it must end eventually; Alois sighed in unconscious relief at the sudden stillness as Claude brushed an ink-dark hair from his forehead, leaning down to kiss it.

/

Alois let out a breath, his eyelids fluttering shut and the tip of his lips tilting up ( _he does love me,_ ) Alois thought — _he does, I know he does_ — and he sank down, and down, into darkness.

/

The scent of soul in the body changed suddenly, the smell of Ciel Phantomhive reaching its way to the surface, what he had been longing after all this time now closer… close enough to taste. In the sudden shock Claude stared into angry, furious eyes at Ciel Phantomhive—and his own release came over him like a wave, so unexpected that all Claude could do was stare at that broken, impossible wonder — _I will have him, I will have him_ , he thought— _I have him_ —

/

"Get up," Ciel Phantomhive said, with cold precision.

Claude pulled himself out, slowly and buckled his trousers, making himself somewhat presentable before he brought one hand to his chest, bowing slightly. "My apologies, young master."

It was almost impossible for Ciel to contain his fury, but it beat itself round without finding a place to rest—no, it flung itself from Alois to Claude to Ciel himself, and back again to Sebastian. "Get out," Ciel said, his voice shaking.

"Might I bring you a wet cloth, or would you rather sleep like this?" There was no audible mockery in Claude's tone, but it was clear enough in his words, and Ciel clenched his hands. "Very well," he bit out at last.

He watched the butler step out of the room and listened until he came back from the washroom, his footsteps quiet; he held a bowl with a steaming rag in it, and he stepped toward the bed as he wrung it out, knelt down and began to carefully wash the inside of Ciel's thighs. Ciel stared straight ahead as Claude worked, deceptively gentle, as he slipped the towel along his skin and under the flimsy, open fabric of his nightgown, and he thought: _and what have you discovered, Alois? That Claude is a pervert? He has shown you no care except a cruel kiss, and he looked at you like a bug._

"Alois was right, you know," he said at last. "I will never make a contract with you. No matter how desperate I am."

"Perhaps," Claude said. "So will you stay a guest in this manor forever? Where would you go if you left?" he added, softly. "You have no revenge—and no power, if you reject my assistance."

"It doesn't matter," Ciel said harshly. "My answer remains the same."

"For now," Claude said. He folded the dirtied cloth into the bowl and brought one finger down the inside edge of Ciel's leg, cleaned with scented water but still smelling below that of the baser smell of sex and arousal. In an instant, Ciel reached out to grab Claude by the hair and yank him in one smooth motion into the wooden side of the bed. There was a loud crack of bone breaking, and Ciel watched unmoved as Claude leaned up from his loosened grip to push the shattered sparkling glass of his spectacles back up his bent nose and broken jawline, mending themselves all the while until the only thing left to tell of the violence was the spiderwebbing cracks in his glasses.

"You're very sure of yourself," Ciel said coldly.

"On the contrary," Claude answered, with a smile. "I am sure of you; with such incredible character and great intelligence, I am confident that you will realize the extent of your options and pick the proper course," he stood up then, holding the bowl, and bowed. "... _My lord_."

.

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* * *

 **Chapter description:** Alois pressures Claude into having sex with him while he is in Ciel's body, to prove to himself that Claude loves him; he is feeling very angry at Claude and jealous of Ciel; while Claude has mixed feelings himself. [The scene is **only** from Alois and Claude's point of view].

Later in the scene, (after that has happened) Alois switches out for Ciel, and Ciel and Claude have a tense conversation in which Claude tries to convince Ciel that his only option is to make a new contract with him.

 **further warnings:** slight self-harm, blood drinking, some violence against Claude (he is fine though...)


	4. Chapter 4

Even in the emptiness of the unfamiliar bed in the unfamiliar room, surrounded by the stale smell of sex and blood, Ciel felt clear, his mind his own, freed of that lingering grasp, that awful uncertainty of muddled thoughts. In the emptiness, the old nightmares tried their best to reassert themselves, and he battled against that familiar panic; but sharper than that was anger, and purpose.

What _would_ he do, if he didn't accede to Claude's demands, trading one tainted contract for another? Could he leave, even if he wished? In a manor guarded by demons, what could he hope to do to escape, when his own body could be turned against him and toward his captors at any moment?

There were tears blurring his vision, but Ciel refused to cry—refused to give Claude, or Alois, or anyone the satisfaction. Instead, he turned his mind toward that which he had been avoiding all this time: Sebastian. Just thinking of him made Ciel's stomach lurch, his mouth go sour at the thought of his betrayal; that he had been leading a merry dance, stringing Ciel toward the knowledge of his parents' killers when all along, the culprit had been himself. And yet… there were images, hovering just outside his grasp, of a maid with lavender hair, and the cold, dry voice of Claude, speaking to him, telling him over and over that Sebastian was to blame… with what proof, other than the realizations under drugs, and influenced by Alois' own memories? Alois, who had been killed by Claude, for the express purpose of gaining Ciel's soul…

A memory from hardly an hour before his capture floated before Ciel's head; he had held the map, shown Sebastian the pattern within it, " _I am being mocked,"_ he had said.

Mocked, yes—but what if it was not by Sebastian, after all?

"Sebastian," Ciel said, quietly. "I rescind my former order. Come here now."

For a moment, the room remained silent, and empty. Then the windows rattled and the walls shook, the draperies lifting in a sudden, chilled breeze and the lights flickering out as a darkness flew into the room. It filled every space, making sight impossible, and invisible hands seemed to wrap themselves around his shoulders in solemn comfort, before being lifted away, drawn into the swirling terror of the vortex before him, even blacker than everything else.

And Sebastian kneeled before him in the room, while the candles burned brightly on.

Ciel stared at the familiar sight, filled with a sudden, unwelcome surge of sentiment, and he had to swallow before he could feel confident enough to speak without his voice shaking. "Sebastian," he said. "You cannot lie to me."

"Yes, my lord," Sebastian said, head bowed. "It is as you ordered."

"Did you kill my parents?"

"No, my lord," Sebastian said, "I did not."

Ciel swallowed. It was hardly more than he had expected, now, and yet it devastated. If he had only realized sooner— "Oh," he said at last, his voice coming out hardly more than a whisper. "I've been made such a fool of."

"Do you wish me to answer that?" Sebastian said, with an undercurrent of wry, entirely inappropriate humor.

Ciel huffed. "I see you haven't lost any of your eloquence while you were away," he retorted, relaxing inch by inch.

Sebastian rose, and Ciel watched Sebastian move to the wardrobe to rummage inside it. His voice was thick with disapproval when he spoke. "What ill-fitting clothes," he said. "This does not fit your style at all."

"I thought the same," Ciel answered, drily.

"...if I may use my discretion to expedite this business?" Sebastian asked.

"You may create anything you could gain by human means, as long as it gets us out of here faster," Ciel allowed.

Without any movement or motion, Sebastian suddenly held one of Ciel's own outfits, pulled from the firmament, pressed and folded and draped over one arm. "Do I have your permission…?" he asked, then, as he came to stand beside the edge of the bed.

"Of course," Ciel said sharply. "You are still my butler."

"...Thank you, young master," Sebastian said quietly, pulling the soiled nightgown from Ciel and tossing it carelessly into the corner of the room. Ciel watched, eyebrow quirking at the improper behavior; but he felt no need to chastise Sebastian—indeed, he rather shared Sebastian's disgust at that article, and indeed the whole room, which would have been horrifying by aesthetic, even if for no other reason.

"It was Claude, wasn't it?" Ciel mused. "He's the one who arranged this whole affair." He shuddered, thinking of that spider's web whose sticky strands had almost entrapped him. What might have happened had he not thought to verify the lies he had been told? What might he have done, all unknowing? Stayed here, where all the while that butler could be making use of his confused state to trick him into breaking his old contract and making a new one—one that had no negotiation, and a twisted end...

"His endgame certainly seems to have been the gaining of your soul," Sebastian agreed.

"My soul…" Ciel said, carefully. "He spoke as though it was something rare and intoxicating. Was this just an inexplicable obsession, or was he speaking the truth? Would other demons feel the same way, if they found me?"

"It is true that yours is one of the rare souls," Sebastian answered. "There are, perhaps, one of your caliber every few centuries—if that. But to say that other demons would act the same—" his eyes flashed with a sudden, fiery purple; "what Claude did was uncouth and vile, trying to steal another demon's property in such a way." And he slipped Ciel's stocking up to his knee and tightened the garter round it.

 _And you?_ Ciel wondered, idly. _What would you be driven to do, if you saw me and did not have me?_

"Can you smell my soul in my blood as well?" Ciel asked, curious.

"Yes," Sebastian answered. "It's quite an enticing aroma…" but any fixation that might have existed under the words was well-hidden, brushed aside by concern. "What a foul excuse for a butler," he muttered. "He hasn't even cleaned the wound."

At once, he was holding a soft sponge, dripping with soapy water, and he ran it over the welts on Ciel's arm while Ciel watched, feeling the sting of soap in the wounds. _It's a good thing I don't let him do this normally,_ he thought. _One could get over-used to such casual magic_.

"And what of Alois?" he continued. "Somehow, his soul is here too—he took over my body..." Ciel trailed off, disturbed. "I can't even say for certain that I will remain me…"

"Yes," Sebastian said, "it's a very clever thing Claude has done, tying the two of you together like that." His quick fingers tied a blue bow around the collar of Ciel's shirt as Ciel raised his chin instinctively to allow it.

"Clever," Ciel said, disparagingly. "I suppose it would seem so, to you."

"I did not say I approved," Sebastian countered. "In fact it is a travesty, mixing a soul so pure with any other."

"A travesty?" Ciel asked. "Then he has defiled me," Ciel said, gazing down at the scabbing, bloody gouges in his arm. _In every way_...

"Indeed," Sebastian said frankly.

Ciel was practiced at interpreting, and parrying, the barbs thrown at him—sometimes in jest, sometimes in earnest—by Sebastian, but the absolute, unequivocal agreement to the fear Ciel had been harboring within him made him quail, and it took all of Ciel's strength not to react, to project instead the uncaring attitude Sebastian would expect of the Phantomhive earl.

But Sebastian continued in a kinder tone, as though to reassure him. "It reflects worse on Alois Trancy than yourself; indeed it is to your credit that your soul still shines so bright, even under tarnish."

"I did not ask you for compliments," Ciel said dismissively—almost disgusted at the uncharacteristic effusiveness; somehow, secretly, comforted; and angry at himself for needing the comfort.

"Nevertheless, it pleases me to give them to you." Sebastian stared warmly at Ciel for one moment, until Ciel lowered his gaze, embarrassed, before he walked to the side table to pick up the two rings sitting in their velvet-lined boxes.

"What do we need those for?" Ciel said, slipping off the bed to stand on the floor. He was filled with an uneasy half-memory, an instinctive revulsion at the sight of the glowing, blood-ruby ring, and faced with the cold, eternally returning facet of his own cursed one. "They would be better thrown into the fire and destroyed."

"Perhaps," Sebastian said. "Yet if I am to have any hope of disentangling Alois Trancy's soul from your own, I will need the focal points Claude created."

"...Any hope?" Ciel murmured, disquieted. "Is it really so hard as that to un-do?"

Sebastian turned back to him with an uncanny expression; Ciel was hard-placed to recognize it, for he'd never seen its like on his butler's face before. Disquiet, uncertainty… regret?

"Harder than you know," he said at last. "And harder, still, after the anchor that has been made, these past nights, between souls and flesh."

The butler slipped the rings into his breast-pocket, then. Ciel said nothing, still shaken by the solemnity that seemed to have been thrown before them like a shroud.

"Are you ready to quit this place?" he asked, stepping to stand before his master.

"...Yes," Ciel said. "I think I'm quite ready, to go home."

And Sebastian picked him up, leaping out of the window in a shower of glass shards, as the old walls quaked and trembled in their wake.

* * *

 _...{end of part one}..._

* * *

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	5. Part 2: A Tangled Web

Why he's a devil, a devil, a very fiend.  
— _The Taming of the Shrew_

* * *

 **Part Two:** _A Tangled Web..._

* * *

{v.}

"Young master—you're home! What happened?" Bard, Mei-Rin and Finny crowded around Ciel in the entranceway, having somehow known when he would be stepping in the door, even though it was near midnight, in order to crowd around and forcefully attempt to hug him. Sebastian, standing beside Ciel, managed to keep their exuberance to a minimum as far as that went, but Ciel still found himself squeezed tightly, his hair ruffled, and having to shout for everyone to get off of him. "I'm very well, thank you, as you can see," he said stiffly, ruffled; but another look at their worried faces had him sighing, somewhat comforted in spite of his annoyance. "Really," he said, softer. "I'll tell you in the morning—" he hesitated, remembering that question Alois had brought up—would he be there in the morning, to tell? Or would Alois have gained control once more? "That is," he corrected, more formally, "Sebastian will tell you all you need to know tomorrow."

The servants backed off at last, having noticed the tone of his voice and the dismissal clear in it, and did not accost him again, but they stared worriedly at his back all the way up the long staircase, which Ciel walked up slowly, his only focus on trying not to stumble and fall and garner even greater attention. A bath was drawn, while Ciel waited, lost in the unquiet turmoil of his thoughts; and then he could not strip fast enough, and sink into the heated waters, which did more to dispel the cloud hanging over him, and the uncanny feeling of cold, than anything so far. For it held nothing untoward in his memory—in his time with the cult, his baths had always been cold, and always with hands touching him, making him 'clean'—hands that at other times were so cruel playing at a parody of normalcy. And when he had been at the Earl Trancy's house, it was cold baths until he gained the favor of the old man, and then it was nothing but hot baths and promises and plans of his own.

Ciel's eyes flew open to stare with sudden tension before him, at the familiar walls, softly candle-lit. "I am Ciel," he said, under his breath, though his voice shook. "Ciel Phantomhive. I am not Alois Trancy… that never happened to me…"

Sebastian took a pitcher of water, moving with his usual careful grace, and poured it over Ciel's back and over his hair, his gloved hand seeming hot, almost feverish, against the shivers that raked over him. "Very good, my lord," Sebastian said. "Remember that; you are not Alois Trancy, and his memories are not your own."

They were not—but how real they seemed! How easy, to sneak up unannounced, to slip itself into his own recollections without him even noticing.

Then Sebastian asked, carefully, if he might make sure Ciel was not injured, and Ciel pushed aside the childish impulse to refuse, which he had never given into even at ten and trusting much less in the power of the chain that bound them.

So at last, he was again in his own room and his own bed, with the high four-posts and the deep blue curtains like the night lit by gas-lamp, and his own plain night-clothes.

"You said you did not kill my parents, Sebastian," he said at last, turning over to watch the dark-clad figure that kneeled beside the bed, candelabra in hand.

"And I did not," Sebastian returned, with equanimity.

"But you have been hiding something from me," Ciel said. "I've suspected it for some time now, but there were always so many uncertainties, so many others who corroborated your story… too many, I thought, to have _all_ be pawns of yours. But I forgot the strength of my chess piece… and that is not all I forgot."

Sebastian hesitated, and then he reached toward the bed-stand, and left the candelabra there. Ciel watched his movements, and did not demand an answer, not yet.

"No, it is not," Sebastian said. "I wondered when you would piece it together."

"It was not until you had me in that crate that I did," Ciel confessed, tiredly. "If you had told me earlier, this all might have been avoided."

Sebastian said nothing. What was he to say, after all? Ciel wondered. He had his motives, as did they all; and his darker than most—he never had given Ciel any information he did not ask for, and Ciel had never asked. That he did not know to ask made no difference.

"It was a whole year I forgot, wasn't it?" Ciel said at last. "You must have doctored all the papers I saw, but even you couldn't control every movement in the city, every incongruity—eventually, even some hidden trauma during the fire couldn't explain it all. And there were flashes of memory, and strangenesses that could be believed only on the strength of the whole illusion." He rubbed his hand, fretfully, against the bandage on his wrist, and Sebastian glanced down, an admonition on the tip of his tongue—but wisely, he refrained. "Madam Red is dead, isn't she."

"Yes," Sebastian said.

Ciel sighed. "So that is why you were so curiously unworried about her poking her nose in on our dealings."

"About that, you are correct," Sebastian answered.

"And I believe you know exactly how I lost my memory… and I think it has to do with whomever killed my parents. They are dead, as well, aren't they?" Ciel asked, at last letting that fear that had slowly formed take flight as words.

"Yes," Sebastian answered, slowly, "they are."

"Then why haven't you taken my soul?" Ciel demanded, sitting up as he did, reaching out as though to shake sense into the demon. But Sebastian took his hand, and Ciel found it not in him to resist the motion, to conjure up that anger that should have been so ready.

"Master…"

"Tell me. Tell me how it happened," Ciel said.

So Sebastian told him, about Jack the Ripper and the death of his aunt; about how they crossed paths with an Indian prince and his butler— "So that's who those people were!" Ciel exclaimed (and didn't that explain the queer image he had had, that day they searched for the white stag, of Sebastian pirouetting with the head of a deer!); how a case of a cursed ring and Lizzy's kidnapping turned into a larger conspiracy, of the cult's resurgence and the angel's crime, of the framing of Ciel and his escape, and what almost broke the bonds of their contract, wearing it to a thread; of what really happened during the burning of London, the death of the angel and the Queen, and Ciel's subsequent travel, mortally wounded, on the death-boat, taken not by the ferryman (for Ciel's soul no longer belonged to him) but by Sebastian; and their last moments on the demon island before, in one fell instant and with incomparable magicks, Claude had taken Ciel's soul and stored it in the blue stone of his discarded ring. The stories ranged from the awful to the humorous (sometimes more in Sebastian's opinion than Ciel's), and it seemed to Ciel's eyes almost as though, as he talked, a tension fell from Sebastian's shoulders.

It was so much to take in, the candles had burned low before Ciel felt confident in his cross-examination on every point, and still, most of it remained nothing but vague, half-images, or entire blank spaces that knowing the truth did not unfold.

"So then you put me in a suitcase," he said at last, so baffled at that idea that he became almost amused at the oddity, "and took me to the Trancy manor, to get back my soul? But it didn't work?"

"Not as I had expected it to," Sebastian said. "Perhaps it was an effect of the magicks that stole you, but I think it more likely that, in the absence of a working contract, your soul had begun to move, slowly, toward its end, passing through the veil between life and death, where the baggage of memories cannot so easily cross. But that process was interrupted when I reunited your soul with your living body."

"Is there any way to regain these memories?" Ciel asked.

"I don't know," Sebastian said. "You seem to have already gained some back, but other memories could be lost forever—and Claude's actions have muddied things still further, mixing what memories you still have with those of Alois Trancy."

"This affair has brought you up against the limits of your power, hasn't it?" Ciel asked, shrewdly, laughing at the scowl that crossed his demon's face, a look about him that reminded Ciel very much of a cat with wounded dignity.

He wondered, again, why Sebastian hadn't finished the contract, and thus Sebastian admitted, with reluctance, his plan to fool Ciel into re-experiencing his revenge, thinking the perpetrator to be Alois instead.

"But it didn't work," Ciel said. "And now I know what you've been doing, so you'll never have that taste in my soul again, will you—unless I remember what happened."

"Yes."

"So why…?"

Sebastian sighed. "I don't wish to put you to waste by consuming you unready. Furthermore, the fact that Alois Trancy's soul is still sullying your own leaves me unsatisfied. Once that matter has been dealt with, then…"

"Then?" Ciel demanded. "What then? I will still not have known my revenge."

"It is true," Sebastian said. "What is lost can never be regained."

"Even though you made quite a mess trying," Ciel said. He lay back down, curling his hands beneath his pillow. "I always thought you were above such things, you know—that they didn't touch you; regret, and petulant wishes."

"As did I," Sebastian said.

"Hmm."

"Still, a new masterpiece may be created," Sebastian said, consideringly. "There is already an unexpected depth to your soul, these past few days, that was not there before. Perhaps what appears at last will be a surprise to both of us."

 _A surprise to both of us,_ Ciel thought, as the scratchiness of sleep pulled at his eyelids. _Pleasant to you, perhaps, but for me, another round of suffering. And for what? My revenge is finished, though I don't remember it… what do I live for, now? Only you, and your cultivating tastes._ If it weren't for his pride, Ciel might have considered breaking the contract, forcing Sebastian to decide now whether to take his soul, tarnished as it was, or leave—but if he left, he left Ciel tethered to Alois, without aid to keep the watchdog's title for the false-queen. Sebastian, standing like a terrible watchman by his bed until he fell asleep, must have known, as he always did, when Ciel considered throwing off the contract; but he did nothing, only watched with burning red eyes, and it was that, in the darkness, that followed Ciel down, a constant, dangerous guardian, into his dreams.

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	6. Chapter 6

Sebastian could feel Claude skulking around outside the manor long before he saw him crouching in the shadows. Claude, who gave him a dark look, holding his blood-blackened rose between gloved fingers. That rose, that living example of their own contract—such as it was. Claude had played very underhand, Sebastian thought; crawling out of their agreement, kidnapping his young master—it had made him angry enough to destroy forests before, and he was still angry now, although he had Ciel back in his grasp.

Sebastian stepped out of the servant's entrance and closed the door quietly behind him, giving Claude a genial smile. "Well now," he said. "Ciel Phantomhive is mine again, fully; of his own free choice. Now I give you one chance to undo this magick that holds him fast to Alois, and take that soul—" Sebastian paused, "or else leave, and I shall consider the matter, regretfully, settled, and will not pursue you. I think that's quite generous, given your actions."

"I will do no such thing," Claude drawled. "I'll take the Phantomhive boy now, and Alois with him. You should count it a relief—you obviously don't care for the changes I've made to your dish, or you would have eaten it as soon as you got it back."

Sebastian frowned, and his eyes flashed warning. "Then do you wish to break the contract?"

"I'm not the one who spoke of breaking the contract," Claude said. "I merely deny that it is finished."

"And I say it is," Sebastian said. He took the rose from his own buttonhole and threw it down at Claude's feet.

"What a surprise," Claude said, looking at the crushed, blackened rose against the paving-stones, with a voice that intimated that he expected nothing less from such an uncultured vermin as Sebastian. "First you give him another chance, and now you break a contract for him… does Ciel Phantomhive know how weak his demon has become?"

"Not so weak as all that," Sebastian answered. He unsheathed gleaming silver, lifted unwatched from their cabinets, and Claude his gold. "And you forget—you are on my grounds now." He smiled, savagely. "I think you might find this a harder fight than you expect."

They leaped up, silverware flying and clashing against each other, missing each other by inches, and then again, bounding across the empty courtyard, passing between the dark trees that shook with their force.

At last, one of Sebastian's blows struck home, sending a spray of blood from Claude's heart, with a fork lodged within it. The blow made Claude stumble, and that was his undoing—before Claude could find his balance Sebastian raked a handful of forks and knives across his throat and through his abdomen, leaning over to hold him bodily down as he did so. By the time Claude threw Sebastian off and managed to stand up, the blood and intestines were spilling out as fast as his body could mend, and though he flew at Sebastian with force, it was easy work to sidestep him, cut off his ankles and throw them over the trees, where it would be long enough before they managed to walk back.

"Now who is distracted?" Sebastian said, grinning from blood-speckled teeth as Claude cursed him, struggling fruitlessly to make it from under Sebastian's grip; but Sebastian only pushed him harder into the ground and stabbed a knife through the meat of his arm into the dirt, which was mixing with blood into a dark mud.

"Do you really think this will get rid of me?" Claude said, with disdain. "You know I'll return—and when I do, you'll be the one to scream under my knives."

"Really?" Sebastian asked, laughter bubbling up behind his voice. "I wouldn't bet on it, myself."

"You never did know how to gamble," Claude replied, offhand.

"Now," Sebastian said, "Tell me how to undo the soul-infusing spell."

"No," Claude said. "I think it would be rather funny to watch your fruitless struggles, before you have to finally admit defeat."

"You won't be able to watch anything," Sebastian said, pulling a glittering spoon into his hand and digging it into Claude's eye-sockets, popping out the golden eyes one after another. They rolled on the ground and glared at him dourly before he crushed them under his boot. "I'll bury you in pieces so far apart it will take you years to find yourself again. Or you can still tell me how to free Ciel Phantomhive's soul, and I'll let you go now."

Claude laughed. "Ciel Phantomhive's soul… what a prize. Worth more than even the finest flavor, his soul dwells in darkness and yet remains unstained. He charms us, vexes us, tantalizes us. And you will never be able to get him… not the way you want him."

Sebastian growled, ripping utensils through Claude's body until it lay in heaving, mangled-red tatters. His anger filled the air with a swirling, blue-edged darkness, and in his fury he missed his hold on Claude, who stood up on bloody stumps, half-dismembered and blind, to watch him from empty sockets infused with an eerie golden glow. Then he straightened his eyeglasses and perched them on his nose. "Vengeance is sweet," Claude said. "Almost as sweet as a soul, wouldn't you agree?"

Sebastian could only make an inarticulate growl of frustration, but a moment later the darkness subsided and he smiled. "Almost…" he said. He stood up and circled around Claude's mending body for a moment. "But nothing is _quite_ as good as a soul, and you won't have that. It's a funny thing about gambling, wouldn't you say? If you win, you get it all, but if you lose…" Sebastian knocked Claude against a tree hard enough to shake the leaves and branches like a sudden wind and crush the bark behind him. "You lose," he whispered, softly, into Claude's ear as he grabbed hold of Claude's right arm and pulled it off. It lay there, limply, on the ground; and Sebastian slashed and mangled the seal on the disattached hand until it was unrecognizable.

"Now, your contract with Alois Trancy exists in limbo, impotent. You can answer no summons—" he smashed Claude's legs at the knees, "understand no power," he cracked Claude's neck so the head hung limply sideways and his body, sagging, went still. "And you will have no soul at all."

In the sudden echoing silence of the summer night, Sebastian watched the limp unliving body of Claude Faustus slide down the edge of the tree into a crooked pile at the base. He tore off the rest of Claude's limbs, then, and flew like a noisome wind to the four corners of the earth, and those who he passed over felt the presence of darkness in their sleep, and dreamed the memory of their most terrifying failure. And Sebastian buried each limb there, and returned, and when he did the eyes, like young sea creatures, had almost reformed, and Claude stared blurrily at him with the hint of a smile and chuckled once, very quiet. "Sebastian Michaelis," he said, disdainfully, "You're a disgrace..." he choked, and heaved, as Sebastian pulled out his heart, "to butlers everywhere…"

The heart, Sebastian buried in an empty tin of tea labelled _New Moon Drop_ , in the center of the rose garden in the Trancy estate.

The rest of Claude's body, that infuriating, talkative thing, Sebastian let fall, weighed with stones into the sea. "Good riddance," he muttered, as he set off back to the Phantomhive manor. But the memory of Claude's last words didn't fade, even as the sky lightened to grey. Absently, Sebastian reached into his side-pocket to check his pocket-watch, attempting to dust it off with blood-soaked gloves that only smeared across the glass, leaving unsightful streaks. Sebastian sighed, and then focused on the time. "Good heavens," he murmured. "Has it really been so long? The young master should be awakening soon." It wasn't like him at all to lose such track of time, to not even have taken note of the pale fingers of dawn that had painted the eastern sky. His butler aesthetic was in a very shoddy state—his tailcoat was covered in blood, as was his shirt, and trousers, and gloves, and he had not readied the mansion for the morning.

And what would he do about this issue of the entangled souls, now that Claude had refused every chance to solve it? Sebastian had never learned the magicks that Claude knew. He could only hope to somehow unweave it from observation, seeing what he could of the threads. It was a terrible bother, Sebastian reflected, with tired annoyance, but it couldn't be helped.

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	7. Chapter 7

Alois woke up screaming. He'd been having the most frightful dream—first he had been in the memory of that last day of the village, the very moment that Luca died, and the cultists kidnapped him, that torture and the old man and the constant taunts of the villagers, and then he was in the forest where he'd first met Claude—only Claude hadn't spoken to him, hadn't come, no matter that he begged and pleaded (reached forward to kiss him but killed him instead) no, what had happened? Where was he? The sun pieced its way through darkened blinds, achingly bright, and he didn't like this dark, dour room that looked like deep water and drowning… There was a horrible, sharp pain in his chest, more painful than anything he had ever felt (except those days before Sebastian rescued him) it hurt!

"Claude," Alois cried out, pulling himself out of bed and stumbling at the unfamiliar height to the floor, in this unfamiliar, weak child's body; he felt like he had woken from a nightmare only to another nightmare. Why did it hurt so much? He was crying, the tears running cold down his cheeks and snot rushing out of his nose, and he couldn't breathe—why couldn't he breathe? What was happening to him? The walls seemed to sway drunkenly as he stumbled to the bathroom, operating on memory alone, and lit a candle on the the third try, with that tight, wrong feeling in his lungs still, and he pressed himself against the cool tile of the sink, still calling, "Claude, Claude, come here, please, I think there's something wrong with me! help me, Claude, I don't know what to do, that's an order," but none of it managed to travel from the back of his mouth to his lips, it all got caught up somehow, everything was going dark around the edges which scared him more—no, not the dark, and he was alone, and lost… why would Claude not come? Alois tripped somehow and fell down, watching the candle as it rolled crazily sideways against the floor, the flames licking experimentally against the tile as though wondering if it could eat it, before flickering out, and the darkness returned even greater...

...there was a numbness on his tongue, the opposite of that hot, burning feeling it always got when Claude was around; it felt like a dead fish in his mouth. He reached up to feel it, as though he would know what was wrong… _Something's happened to the contract!_ he realized at last. _It's there, but it's faded, off somehow…_

/

"My lord. Can you hear me? Young master, please, answer me if you can."

Ciel opened his eyes to find Sebastian crouched over him with an expression of worry and concern; he was in his shirtsleeves and his hands were uncovered. In the darkness the contract glowed an eerie purple as Sebastian pressed his hands to Ciel's clammy skin.

"Do you know what happened?" he asked at last, seeing that Ciel was conscious.

Ciel opened his mouth, took a breath experimentally, and found that it entered easily. He sat up, leaning on Sebastian's outstretched arm, and put a hand to his forehead. "I don't know… Asthma. But I haven't… Not for years…" he breathed. "Something happened before that. Alois was here, he had woken up, but it hurt, and he didn't know what to do… he doesn't know how to deal with… the pain… Claude was gone and the contract…" Ciel's brow furrowed. "The contract, something happened to his contract. It felt almost familiar… I've felt it before… but I don't remember when… why can't I remember?"

"Please, calm down," Sebastian said, gently, "Working yourself into a state will not help you."

"I'm not working myself into a state," Ciel snapped. "That was Alois' fault. He panicked, and Claude wasn't there. If I had been able to do anything, I could have stopped it."

Sebastian held Ciel against him until he sighed and leaned back, letting Sebastian push his fingers through his sweat-damp hair to uncover his other eye; through the vague purple haze Ciel could make out blurry shapes and outlines that interacted strangely with the normal vision from his left eye. All of it was blurry, except for the answering purple on Sebastian's contract seal, which shone crisp and clear like the only real thing in that distorted world. Sebastian brushed a finger along his eyelid and the purple sparked up like fire, turning everything into a confused, sparkling haze of calm. Ciel allowed it for a moment, and then pulled away to sit on his own. He turned to look at Sebastian then, taking critical note of the strangenesses he had already noticed.

"What happened to your clothes?" he asked.

"That has something to do with the answer to your other question, I believe," Sebastian said, "but first I'd like to know why you've never informed me of your asthma. Such an illness seems like it would be my business to—"

"No," Ciel said, annoyed. "It's not, because it hasn't happened for years, and it wouldn't have happened if all Alois Trancy hadn't interfered." He stood up, and then spoke in a more thoughtful voice. "It was probably that stuff they kept dousing me in, actually… I was so cold after that, and it was so strange…"

Sebastian stood up as well. "Nevertheless, I think I will read up on the proper ways to deal with this issue."

Ciel sighed. "As you wish," he said, irritated. "Now, answer me: what did you do? —Don't look at me like that, this was your fault somehow, I can tell."

"I hardly think I could have been aware of the possible ramifications when I was not duly informed," Sebastian began, and continued, more precisely answering the question, at Ciel's glare, "I've dealt with Claude, for the moment; his contract with Alois Trancy is in abeyance and he will not be troubling us for some time."

"Hmph. Dare I ask how?"

"Does Alois Trancy know how such a thing can be managed?"

"Alois?" Ciel asked, startled. "How should I know?"

"You do have his memories," Sebastian said. "If he has experienced anything, you would know of it."

Ciel frowned. "No," he said at last. "I don't think he does." He looked carefully at Sebastian. "So, I would know of what he experienced, and he…" Ciel's fists clenched and then he looked away. "I see," he said at last, in a carefully controlled voice. "Is this your way of saying there are things you prefer not to speak of in front of _him_?"

"We do have our secrets," Sebastian said.

"And how are we to have them, if we cannot discuss them?" Ciel bit out. "That seems... quite inefficient."

"I will give my utmost to the solving of that problem, young master," Sebastian said. "And be assured that you will become aware of the answer, when I do."

 _Become aware,_ Ciel thought. _But how will you tell me?_ He narrowed his eyes in thought. _There's something Sebastian already knows, and he want me to figure it out—it has something to do with the limits of this inter-knowledge between Alois and I._ But the answer hovered just out of his reach.

"All right," Ciel said at last, and sighed. "What is on the agenda for today, then?"

Sebastian opened his mouth, and hesitated, closing it with an apologetic, almost embarrassed expression.

"Let me guess," Ciel said. "There is no agenda. And it has something to do with you being busy getting rid of Claude." He picked up the fallen candle and pushed open the door to the bathroom, leading the way back to his bed-chamber. "I am getting very tired of days with no agendas."

"Perhaps breakfast first," Sebastian said, "and then, there is always paperwork to be done. As far as I know, you haven't been keeping up with that for the last few days."

"Wonderful," Ciel groaned.

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	8. Chapter 8

The servants must have been debriefed, Ciel assumed, because they spent the rest of the morning giving him anxious looks, walking past his study with thin pretexts as to what they were doing. Ciel was irritated enough already with all the paperwork that had piled up over the last few days of his being "indisposed", and well-meaning pity frayed him to the last nerve, until at last, shouting at Mei-Rin, who ducked quickly away with a muffled apology, led to blessed quiet. Sebastian had made a sweet confection for his snack, and put all the cream and honey Ciel could have wished for, which if he had been anyone else Ciel would have suspected of being another pitying gesture—but that was the one thing he never had to worry about from Sebastian. Whatever his reasons, Ciel took the cake without complaint, because he _deserved_ it, dammit. The world seemed a little less intolerable by lunchtime, and Ciel began to think he might make it through the entire day without killing someone, when the doors flung open—Mei-Rin and Finny running, with terrified expressions, after a whirlwind in yellow and pink, shouting pointless entreaties that they had tried their utmost to stop it.

Ciel's heart sank.

"Ciel!" Unceremoniously, Lizzy squeezed him by the shoulders and spun him around so fast his feet just about lifted off the floor; Ciel stumbled as she let go of him, putting out a hand to the edge of his desk to steady himself as he stared blankly at his fiancée. While on some days he could find Lizzy's energy tolerable, now was not one of them, and her sunny disposition made him want to curl up under his desk and hide. This, he could not do, because he was the Earl Phantomhive, her cousin, and her betrothed, and it was his duty to entertain her, even if she _had_ shown up unannounced. Even the uncomplicated fury that had been simmering in his breast faded to a dull confusing muddle, and he could do nothing but open his mouth and say flatly: "Lizzy. What a surprise."

"I heard you'd returned," Lizzy said, having the grace to notice, at last, the oddness of his color, and look abashed. "We thought, after such an illness, you might prefer some company," she finished, hesitantly.

"Illness?" Ciel asked. In another moment, Sebastian, having entered the room with silent grace, had stationed himself behind Ciel's elbow and elaborated, "the unseasonable flu you were afflicted with, my lord; it seems that Lady Elizabeth suspected your recovery and took steps to be the first one you would receive after your ordeal."

"Of course," Ciel said, blankly. "Um… Well then, Lady, I…" he floundered.

Lizzy, glancing at him with sudden tears in her eyes, looked away quickly, and there was a sudden, awkward silence, before Sebastian said, gently, "My lady."

"Yes, Sebastian?" Lizzy asked, turning to him. "What is it?"

"It seems that the young master has discovered our slight… elision, although he has not, regretfully, regained his memories."

"Oh!" Lizzy exclaimed, raising a hand to her mouth in surprise as she turned to Ciel. "But I thought you said if he knew, he might never remember… and that was why we must be careful to give no clue away…"

Ciel sighed. "Perhaps that is true," he said. "But, as I was not informed of this important limit to my actions, I discovered your deception, and now we must live with what has happened." He could not, quite, keep the bite out of his voice. Lizzy looked back at him, solemnly, and Ciel found himself softening; after all, his ire was not really directed at her—if she had been party to a deception, it had been with the full belief that it was for his own good, and how much she must have suffered! Having to watch every word, plagued with a sadness that seemed ill-fitting on a form that was made for dancing across the earth.

"What's done is done," Ciel said, kindly. "Oh Lizzy, don't cry…" For the tears trembling in her eyes had sprung forth onto her cheeks, and she blinked as he brushed a careful hand over her face.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I've given it away, somehow, it's all my fault—"

"It wasn't," Ciel said. He opened his arm, awkwardly, to let Lizzy fall into it, and she sobbed a bit into his shoulder while he held her close, breathing in her wildflower scent. "I may not remember the past year, before the fire," he said at last, "but I remember that day on the river, when we found the white stag. Do you?"

"Of course!" Lizzy exclaimed, leaning back to look at him.

"See? All is not lost, after all," Ciel said, with a slight smile. "But do stop crying, or you'll make a liar of the stag."

Lizzy sniffled. "I could never…" with effort, she pulled herself together, squaring her shoulders and facing him with red-rimmed eyes and a trembling smile. "I understand," she said at last, bravely. "We have to try to be happy, don't we? Even if it's hard."

"Yes…" Ciel said, his voice trailing off. _I wish_ you _to be happy, beloved_ , he thought. _It is far too late for me, and has been since the day I traded my life away; but when I see the brightness in your smile, it is as though I could, almost, feel_...

"Since it's all been revealed anyway," Ciel said, "would you tell me some story of the time I've forgotten?"

"Oh, yes," Lizzy said. "Anything!" She grabbed him by the hand, and he tightened his hold around her strong fingers.

"I shall prepare tea," Sebastian said. "It is a beautiful day, if you would prefer it on the patio?"

"That would be lovely, Sebastian, thank you!" Lizzy said. "Come, Ciel—" she walked purposely out the door, tugging him in her wake. "Now, what should I tell you about first…"

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	9. Chapter 9

Finny always liked to take some time, when he had a free moment around weeding, pruning, raking, and other things, to go to the memorial for Pluto. Bard and Mei-Rin had vetoed the idea of a life-sized rendition, so instead it was a smaller statue, small enough to hide among the bushes in the garden, where you wouldn't notice the difference from any other sculpture unless you knew why this one was particularly important. They had buried his remains underneath it, and the garden seemed to know that something unusual had occurred—all the flowers that grew from that spot had a faint, silvery sheen and smelled a bit more like dog than normal flowers did.

Finny sat down, pushing his straw hat from his face and leaning back, letting his fingers dig into the rich soft dirt. It was a beautiful sunny day, just the kind that Pluto would have liked. He took from his pocket the photo he'd kept from that day Ciel had ordered them all to catch a picture of Sebastian with the ghost-camera that showed the one you cared about most—but only if they were not of this world. They had never been able to view it before it was destroyed, so the most important one in Sebastian's past was still as much of a mystery as it had ever been, but in return Sebastian had handed them another photo to develop, which he had taken "just out of curiosity," because he "hadn't been able to resist the opportunity the young master had so enticingly provided." It was yet another example of that strange, half-antagonistic game the butler and master seemed to play against each other, which might have been mean-spirited if it were not so grounded in familiarity and complete trust.

That photo, which had seemed merely baffling before, now took on an air of sadness—poor Pluto, who had been alive and well when the photograph was taken, was now only another one of those ghostly images. It made a shiver go down Finny's spine, and that only added to the uncanniness of the image itself—Ciel, peacefully asleep in his chair, the figures from his toy house scattered on the desk before him, ostensibly to test a new toy for his company—an incongruous reminder of childhood in a boy who, despite being younger than Finny, so many times seemed to act like he was not a child at all… and Sebastian, standing beside the young master as was his wont, not so strange except that it was _he_ who had been behind the camera.

It was a peculiar thing, Finny thought, that Ciel must now not even remember that day; the picture that he had been so angry about then didn't even exist anymore in his mind. On that day, like many others, Sebastian had seemed to hold all the cards—always being a little too fast to catch a snapshot of, or moving at the wrong moment, oblivious but… maybe not. How different from now! When Finny had heard Sebastian's explanation of the his and the young master's sudden absence, Finny had been so angry and sad, he found it hard not to cry, and, for once, he found himself looking at Sebastian in a way he never had before. Even he, who seemed blessed with such inexplicable luck and effortless ability, had failed—and the thought was inconceivable, almost traitorous, although it was true.

He knew he couldn't blame Sebastian for being tricked, for having to fight off enemies which let Ciel be taken away, but after hearing about how he'd been taken by an evil magician, tortured, and practiced dark magic on that was meant to put the soul of a dead boy into Ciel's body, Finny couldn't help but blame Sebastian for not being there—but more than that he blamed himself. If he and Bard and Mei-Rin had been there, they could have handled the enemies, and Sebastian would never have been drawn away from the young master—or they could have protected Ciel while he went off to do battle. It was like those chess metaphors the earl and the butler liked to use so much—the king might be the smartest, the one in charge, but he was the most vulnerable piece on his board and had to be protected—and they hadn't been there to do their duty.

"And the magician?" Mei-Rin had asked after it all, the first one of them to break the silence, and behind her glasses she had that hard, calculating look in her eye that made Finny certain that she would hunt down whoever had to pay and make them regret it. "What about 'im?"

"He has been disposed of," Sebastian answered.

"Good," Bard answered vehemently, taking a drag of his cigarette, an action that Sebastian did not chastise him for as he would usually have done (even though he was not only smoking, but doing so in the kitchen!)

But Finny couldn't say a thing, all he could think of was Ciel locked up in some small room without any windows, away from the sun and the birds and the trees, not knowing if anyone was going to come and save him. "I have to go," he'd said at last, and ran outside, where he'd done quick work on uprooting shady-looking shrubs and pounding down new gravel that someone would surely have a use for. And then he'd ended up here.

"You got room there?"

Finny looked over to see Bard, and moved over a bit.

"I dunno if you want to be alone," he added.

"I did for a bit," Finny said, "But I don't mind. I think I'd like to talk to someone now," he said.

Bard sighed and sat down next to him, the burnt-out end of his cigarette held between his thumb.

"It's just not fair!" Finny said, at last. "We were supposed to be a family… we were supposed to protect him. This was a second chance, for all of us… but now, all this happened with the young master… and Pluto's gone, and now it seems like he may _never_ get his memory back… it's like everything nice that happens just gets ruined." He clenched his fists as tears started in his eyes again.

"Is that Pluto's picture?" Bard asked at last.

"Oh, yes…" Finny said. "I like to take it out and look at it here," he explained. "It makes me feel like I'm close to him somehow."

Bard picked it up, looking closely at it, before chuckling. "A right sight they are, don't you think?" he asked.

Finny looked at the picture again, and this time he could see how funny it was, and not just how sad. He smiled. "Yeah," he said softly.

"The young master was right, you know," he said. "There are times when a body becomes something they wouldn't have approved of, and you have to make the hard decisions."

"I know," Finny said, "but it's still not fair."

"No," Bard said, slowly. "No, it's not."

"That's not going to happen to Ciel?" Finny said. "Now that there's this ghost…" he trailed off.

"It's not a proper ghost," Bard said, "At least that's how Sebastian explained it—not that I'd be afraid even if it was," he added, with a glint in his eyes. "I've learned that there isn't much that can't be fixed with the proper application of a flamethrower."

"Except dinner!" A laughing voice came from nearby, and they looked over at Mei-Rin, standing among the flowers—when she wasn't knocking things over, Mei-Rin could be the quietest of them all.

"For your information, the flamethrower method works fine for that too," Bard retorted lazily. "I just haven't worked out the kinks yet, is all."

"But do you think he's going to be okay?" Finny asked.

Bard sighed. "I don't know," he said at last. "But we have to do the best we can, 'cause he sure won't be if we don't."

"You're right," Finny said. He grabbed the picture, sticking it back in his pocket, before standing up along with the chef. "Why don't you show me around the garden a bit?" Bard asked, suddenly. "I don't know anything about flowers," he added, in explanation.

"Oh, neither do I, really," Finny said, "I just take care of them!"

"I think you know more than me, at any rate!" Mei-Rin said, smiling.

"Well, maybe!" Finny admitted. Mei-Rin and Bard laughed, and Finny blushed. "Okay, okay," he said at last. "I'll give you a look around—if you really want to."

"'Course we do!" Bard said.

So that's what they did.

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	10. Chapter 10

**_(earlier)_**

The fires had still been burning throughout the city when the three Phantomhive servants felt the shockwave that sprang from the nearby Tower Bridge. The noise was incredible, and it was joined by a blinding flash of lights, and the sound of an inhuman scream, that felt, to Finny, "like when you're dreaming and it's such a good dream—there's a little bird hopping on the ledge outside your window, and he wants to be your friend… and you reach out and pick him up and let him eat out of your hand—and then you wake up and remember… that he's dead… because of you." Bard felt it as "that moment when you realize you've really messed up now… your companions are dead, and it was your fault, because you took the wrong call, and now there's only blood and bodies around you…" and Mei-Rin, that it was like the worst job she'd had to pull off... "She was such a sweet child, she had never done a thing wrong in her life… but her father'd made enemies, oh yes he had, and so he had to be taught a lesson… It was only after she was dead that I realized I'd have rather suffered the worst that could've been done to me, or even died meself, than have done what I did… but it was too late." It wasn't only they that were affected, everyone around them in the city stopped running, looting, or whatever they had been doing to curl up on the ground, and it was only minutes later that the weeping abated.

"What… what happened?" Finny asked, eyes red-rimmed from smoke and tears, the pins fallen from his hair. Mei-Rin had dirt on her face and a tear in her skirt, and she reached into her sleeve to pull out her glasses which she began polishing furiously.

"I dunno," Bard said, "but whatever it is," he paused, "...I think it's bad." A moment later, as they staggered to their feet along with whoever else had been nearby, he continued, "where'd the young master go?"

"Didn't he go to see the queen?" Mei-Rin asked.

"He was going to stop whatever was going on," Finny added.

"Did it work?" Bard said. They looked around, but no one appeared.

"Well then," Bard continued, grimly, "Whatever happened came from over there, so we better go check it out."

"Yes, sir!" Finny and Mei-Rin said, straightening to attention and saluting. They they all ran through the city toward the bridge. It was fallen, with a gaping hole in its middle, and there was the palpable smell of what seemed like…

"Burnt feathers," Mei-Rin exclaimed. They were scattered around, singed, blackened, but still, in places, an unearthly glowing white. There was nothing else on the bridge except for the body of Ash, the queen's bodyguard, dead and lying twisted on the ground with the expression of purest horror on his face. Though all three had seen their share of bodies, something about this seemed of particular import, and each one felt the same creeping, hollow feeling down their spine.

"I can't… even look at it," Finny admitted a minute later, standing at the edge of the bridge rail and leaning over, his hands in fists over his eyes.

"It's horrible," Mei-Rin said, "Horrible, like someone walked over me grave!"

Bard swallowed thickly. "Yeah," he said.

They all left after that. Whatever had happened was finished, and neither Ciel not Sebastian were there. They seemed to have vanished without a trace.

It was days later that the three made it back to the Phantomhive estate.

"I thought Pluto burnt it down!" Finny exclaimed, as they crested the hill to find the manor looking just as it always had. There was no sound as they walked up the drive, and when they peeked in the door, they found the whole place exactly as they had left it, pristine and empty.

"I was sure of it," Mei-Rin muttered, wringing her hands. "I saw the flames, yes I did."

"Whether it burnt or not," Bard said at last, "the important thing is, what happened to Sebastian and the young master? I would've thought they'd be back by now."

"Ho ho ho," a soft chuckle came from the hall beside them, and they all jumped.

"Tanaka!" Mei-Rin screeched. "Have you been here this whole time?"

But Tanaka only smiled vaguely at them and chuckled again.

"Well, he's no use right now," Bard sighed. So, without anything else to do, they drifted back to their ordinary tasks, as much as they could without the master or Sebastian. And it was almost a week after that when Sebastian came back in the door like a black shadow in the early hours of morning, and after startling them all awake, said, in a short, clipped voice, that the young master had suffered greatly during the fire and was being taken care of in the hospital, from which he was being discharged this very day.

"Is he all right, then?" Finny asked.

Sebastian paused. "That is what I came here to warn you about," he said. "As far as the doctors can tell, he seems to have lost his memory of the past year, and they warn that giving any indication of the fact might harm the young lord and hinder his recovery. So for that reason, I am charging you to keep up the pretense. Whatever it takes, you are not to let the young master know that anything is amiss. Do you understand? Are you able to carry this out?"

"Yes, sir!" they replied, saluting. Of course they would do anything to protect the young master, even if it meant striking the past year from history altogether.

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* * *

 _...end of part two..._

 _._

 _._

 _._


	11. Part 3: To the Waters and the Wild

O, that a mighty man of such descent,  
Of such possessions and so high esteem,  
Should be infused with so foul a spirit!

— _The Taming of the Shrew_

* * *

 **Part three:** _to the waters and the wild_ …

* * *

{vi}

"Claude?" Alois asked blearily, hearing the sounds of curtains being drawn and the calm, quiet sound of tea being poured. He blinked his eyes open, noticing with a jolt the unfamiliarity of the room and then remembering, suddenly, the reason why Claude wasn't there. He sat up, looking over at the butler that watched him with a pristine, blank expression from deep maroon eyes.

"Alois Trancy," Sebastian said. "Or perhaps I should say, 'Jim Mackan'."

Alois scowled. "If you use that name, I'll bite Ciel's tongue. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

Sebastian took a cup and saucer and held it out to him. "Very well," he said. "Alois Trancy." Alois took the cup—to be really honest, he'd never enjoyed tea, he hadn't drank it at all before Claude became his butler. He swirled the dark liquid around and tilted the cup back and forth before taking a sip or two and putting it back on the saucer, while Sebastian watched.

"You killed Claude, didn't you?" he said. "First Luca, and now Claude… you've taken everything I care about. Does that amuse you?"

"I may have killed Claude," Sebastian said, "but I was not the demon that your brother made a contract with. I was never at that village and was not responsible for his death."

"Like I believe you!" Alois laughed scornfully. "Whatever." He stood up then, shrugging off his nightshirt, and Sebastian stepped forward, handing him his shirt and trousers as Alois dressed himself. At last he was left tying his shirt ribbon in a messy knot.

Sebastian watched for a moment, frowning. "If you would allow me," he said.

"You'd just hate it if I walked around looking badly dressed, wouldn't you?" Alois asked. He smiled slightly, and tugged the knot tighter. "You know—I think I like it like this."

"What a pity," Sebastian said, as he reached over to his collar, "since I care not a whit what _you_ like." He took hold of the end of the knot and quickly unraveled it. Alois narrowed his eyes.

"You're pretty mouthy for a butler," he observed.

"Am I?" Sebastian asked pleasantly.

"Yes," Alois said. He tilted his head as Sebastian re-tied the ribbon, watching the expression of contemplation on his face. "I don't care at all about inconveniencing you," he said at last, "but I am sorry, for Ciel's sake. I never wanted this to happen to him."

"How interesting," Sebastian said, flatly. "You've done quite a good job bringing about what you didn't want to happen."

"Let's get one thing clear," Alois said, grabbing Sebastian's hand as he started to turn away.

"I wanted Ciel Phantomhive for myself, but I never meant to treat him badly. I only wanted to take him from you, to hurt you the way you hurt me." _And save him_ , Alois thought, _from the machinations of demons_. If there was one thing Alois felt for Ciel besides jealousy, it was sympathy—he knew the situation Ciel was in as no one else did.

There was a long silence, and then Sebastian chuckled. " _Hurt_ me? If that was your aim, you've failed more badly than I thought."

"Have I?" Alois said. He looked hard at Sebastian. "No," he said at last, "in that, I think I've succeeded quite well."

Sebastian pulled his hand away, the humor fading from his expression. "If you wish, you may go anywhere in this manor; the servants have been informed of the situation and will not take orders from you."

"Pity," Alois said. "It would be fun to see what trouble I could make in Ciel's name. I bet I could have have fooled them."

"You underestimate them," Sebastian said. He took the tea tray, the discarded nightgown over his arm, and began walking to the door.

 _And you underestimate me_ , Alois thought, glaring at Sebastian's back. It was a mistake all of Alois' enemies had ended up regretting.

What a bothersome place this was, Alois thought—so empty, dull, and dreary—it felt like there were shadows under everything, even the places there shouldn't have been shadows; the dark-paneled walls of the manor seemed to exude the same air as the demon that resided within it. Alois meandered through the library, where he tipped the books half out of their shelves and re-arranged them in incoherent ways. It was there that he ran into the maid, who flushed and stopped short at the sight of him, her overly-large round spectacles glinting and a feather-duster poised in her hand.

"Oh!" she said.

Alois looked her over, noticing the promising swell of her ample breasts under her pressed dress and starched white apron, the rosy flush on her cheeks, her intriguing, copper-red hair. Not bad at all.

Alois smiled, pushing a book back into its place and turning to face her. "And you must be Mei-Rin," he said, with all the charm he could muster, smiling a sweet, childish smile tempered by the slightest hint of appreciative lust. "What a pleasure to finally meet you."

"A—I—welcome to the manor, Earl, Trancy, sir," she stumbled, obviously thrown off-balance.

 _So I'm not what she expected_ , Alois thought. He walked forward, running his fingers _thump, thmp, thump_ along the edges of the books as he did so; the blush on the maid's cheeks grew even redder, and he reflected for a moment on his lost wardrobe, which would have accentuated the indecent sway of his walk. As he came closer to her, she held out her feather duster between them, saying with a surprisingly firm voice, "As much as I may be flattered, you won't get _anything_ from me," and the slight emphasis on 'anything' made him narrow his eyes, reflecting that she really was cleverer than she looked—not that he should have been expecting anything else. _Not willing to spill information, then?_ he mused. _Well, it's no matter—Ciel knows more than you do, I'm willing to bet, and I know_ him. He smiled again. "I wouldn't dream of it," he said brightly. "I am terribly bored though, you wouldn't know anything I might use to pass the time?"

"Hasn't anyone…" she started, and then paused. "No, of course not. I'm afraid I have duties but perhaps…" she hesitated, clearly at a loss, and then settled on, "well, there's always the music room."

Alois laughed. He'd learned the piano passably well, once he'd gotten in with old Trancy, but it was nothing near the skill these born nobles must have, and he'd never cared to practice it with Claude—he'd always preferred dancing. The thought of Claude made him sad again, suddenly. _Where are you?_ he thought. _Can you still feel me, somewhere, or are you really lost, travelled into that void of death forever?_ It was a chilling thought, and if he'd truly believed it he didn't know what he would have done—gone mad with grief, perhaps… or just plain mad. _Not that_ we _aren't already_ , he thought, with a sudden smirk. _You're a mad dog, Phantomhive_. He giggled, and caught the maid's eye, noticing her sudden awkward look. "You know," he said at last, "I think I'll take you up on that. Where is the music room?"

With another blush, the maid lead the way down the many halls. Maybe she didn't know that he already 'remembered' where the room was, Alois mused, or else she was too tactful to say anything; either way, it was a nice gesture, even if she was being paid for it. He gave her another smile and a flirtatious little wave at the door, and she smiled shyly at him before leaving.

One look around had Alois sighing dramatically, and he flopped himself over the piano bench, lifting the cover to see all those keys, like teeth with black rotted holes in them. "You'd just love to chew my fingers up, wouldn't you?" he muttered, darkly, his hands hovering over the keys before settling and playing a few bars. It was dreadfully dull without any audience, and Alois slipped off the bench to skip away, leaving the piano uncovered. Whatever Sebastian said to him, he could tell that Claude wasn't dead-dead-dead, but only somewhat dead, because even with his strangely numb tongue, he could still feel the thin, constant echo of his contract, useless, for now, but for the reassurance that came with the fact that it was still there, even as slightly as this. _But what has he done to you?_ Alois thought. _And how do I get you back, if the strength of my orders aren't enough?_

He found the long staircase to the main hall, and decided on a sudden whim to slide down the long curving banister, shrieking with laughter until he got to the end. He hopped off onto the tiled floor, jumping lightly from white square to white square until he reached the large front doors, pushing them open to reveal the bright summer sunshine. The curving drive lay like a winding beacon leading away, and Alois wondered, as he started off down it, how far he would be able to walk before something swooped down to stop him. It was not very long at all, but the barrier didn't swoop down; instead, a tousled blonde head poked itself up from behind a row of bushes, clippings lying in swathes about the path and leaves in his hair.

"Hello there," the boy said, cheerily. "You must be Alois!"

 _Finnian_ , Alois thought. Of course—the innocuous gardener with the uncanny strength. He had a wide, bright smile and lovely green eyes.

For an earl who had kept his estate with only one demon instead of five, Ciel Phantomhive still managed to gain some interesting specimens. "That's sir to you," Alois said, with a small smile, "but you're right. And your name is…?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," the gardener replied, walking out of the bushes to give him a little bow, as if to make up for his earlier impropriety. "My name's Finnian, Finny for short."

"And which do you prefer?" Alois asked.

Finny stopped a moment. "Well…" he said at last. "I suppose I like both, but Finny's fine; most everyone calls me that."

"Finny," Alois said. "Do you take care of these whole grounds?"

"Yes, I do!" Finny beamed. "If you want me to show you around anywhere here, I'll be happy to take you."

 _But not farther than the manor grounds, of course_ , Alois thought. He was instinctively on guard against anything not-quite human, from Finny to the hawk-eyed sniper-maid, but more than that, something about the cheery, uncaring attitude of this gardener and the bleached thatch of his hair reminded Alois too much of himself to easily overlook the ever-present danger he posed. Still, it would probably be good to walk with him, if only because this young man might let loose things in casual chatter that the maid would never have.

"That would be wonderful," Alois replied, and let the gardener lead him about, telling him the details of his daily chores when prompted. It was more than clear that Finny was happy with his job. _What a funny thing_ , Alois thought. He supposed some people in the village must have been happy with their jobs, but all he had ever known were bitter people, worrying every day about making ends meet, always so scared that any wrong move or bad harvest would plunge them into the same poverty Jim and Luca had suffered, forced to beg on the streets like kicked dogs, and just as unwelcome. This innocent joy, after all that Finny had experienced, though he didn't speak of it at all, made Alois think, with a pang, about Luca—how even the meanest, most desperate situation had been a game to him, how he had worked with all he had to bring Alois happiness, when his fits of anger or apathy would overcome him.

"Are you all right?" Finny asked, noticing Alois' sudden, withdrawn look and lack of response to whatever he had been going on about.

"I'm fine," Alois snapped.

"Okay," Finny replied, still kindly, as though he hadn't noticed Alois' manner at all.

 _You're so lucky, Ciel Phantomhive_ , Alois thought, bitterly. _How can you have it all, so freely—a noble lineage, servants that would die for you of their own free will, the love of not one but two demons_ … it made him sick! It made him so bloody angry. He had had to beg and claw for every scrap, and Ciel floated on the air, like a flame to which all those around him were only helpless moths, beating their wings to get closer to that uncaring doom. And Alois was one of them, just as wretched, still begging, still ignored.

"I think luncheon might be ready, if you'd like to go in," Finny said at last.

"Thank you," Alois said. "I will." He walked quickly back to the house, followed by Finny, who contrived to walk beside him as though it was an aimless thought, whistling.

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	12. Chapter 12

Nothing else presented itself that day, and Alois' mental calls to the uncertain remnants of his bond with Claude went unanswered. Sebastian waited the table at lunch time, tea time, and supper, with the utmost civility as befitted a butler, but Alois could feel the demon's eyes burning into his back when he stood behind him at the table. Without the luxury of being able to order everything as he wished, abuse Hannah, and nettle Claude, this whole routine became unbearably boring, for Sebastian ignored him to all the extent of his ability, and Alois knew that there was no hidden regard under that indifferent mask; fury, perhaps, if he'd angered him enough, but even that was unsatisfying when the butler refused to show it. Since their tête-à-tête that morning, he had not said an unprompted word to Alois at all. _Not that it matters_ , Alois thought. _I wouldn't want him to talk to me anyway, that filthy murdering demon_. The food had a fine texture at least, though it tasted of nothing but that it also had the faintest hint of graveyard-ashes. The bath was almost tepid, and Alois, feeling the water, remarked upon it. "I expected you to be more proper than that, but I guess you really have no standards, do you?" he sneered. "Claude was right about you."

"My apologies," Sebastian murmured insincerely. "I will rectify that at once." He added heated water and the perfumed poultice he'd added to the tub began to twirl about, the leaves within dashing about as they were buffeted by the steaming liquid. It smelled like tea, Alois thought. He'd had better perfumes at his manor.

By the time he dressed himself in his nightgown, he had begun to shiver, although Ciel Phantomhive had not lacked in towels.

"Leave a candle burning here when you go, if you would," Alois said, as he turned down the covers on Ciel Phantomhive's moonlight-cold bed.

"Of course," Sebastian answered, and put the candelabra down on the side table, stepping close to him. Alois looked up into the demon's suddenly-burning eyes, fiery purple, and knew that he was not going to be left to his bed as easily as he had hoped. His hands grew even colder, and the sudden hammering of his heartbeat in his chest was loud in the deathly silence of the room. He stepped away from the butler, his mind calling futilely, _Claude, please come, I need you_. And there was no answer.

Sebastian smiled.

There was no way to describe the terror of that smile, or the way Alois could somehow see every glint of light on the unsheathed fangs at the corners of his mouth. _How awful, that this would happen now_ , Alois thought, almost calmly, though his knees were almost buckling and he had pressed himself up against the side-table, knocking things down willy-nilly in his need to get away. _I don't want to be killed by Sebastian. I don't want to be… I don't want…_

"Is something the matter?" Sebastian asked, mockingly. "Is my service not to your liking?" The shadows had risen up behind him, incoherently, as though they had some evil mind of their own, and when the hand reached out to grab him, Alois screamed—but the sound was cut off by a white-gloved hand pressed against his mouth. Then he was being carried, as the door opened, out of the room and through the silent, dark halls of the manor, the only light that existed what came from Sebastian's glowing eyes. All the way down to the cellar, where Alois saw with horror that there had been chains attached to the wall there.

"Stop, stop, Sebastian, what are you doing, please, I'll do anything," Alois begged, as inhumanly strong arms tightened the cuffs around his wrists, binding them together so that he could not escape. The demon stepped back, and the darkness was entire, with only those two burning specks, watching him with cruel humor. Alois reached forward, crawling as far as he could along the dirt floor. "What do you want from me? Blood?" he scratched his nails into the skin of his ankles, the only place he could reach, until he felt blood welling up. "Sex? I could pleasure you much more if you released me," he babbled, although he knew it would do no good.

The chuckle that filled the room was like nightmares taken form, a cold echo that resounded as though they were in a tall-roofed hall of stone instead of a mean, dirt-floored cellar. "I want nothing from you, Alois Trancy," the voice said, "except you gone."

"You can't kill me!" Alois screamed. "I'm in Ciel's body, I'm in Ciel's soul… you want him, I know you do. Whatever you do to me, you do to him too. You know that."

"Yes," the voice whispered, velvety, suddenly behind his ear, and Alois jumped. He was sobbing carelessly, taking horrible, uneven breaths, and he was so very cold. If only he could get out of this darkness, if only he could figure out what Sebastian wanted of him… "I do."

"You love him!" Alois said. It was the one thing he clung onto, the only way he could see out of this terrible mess… if Sebastian only thought, for a moment, that Ciel was here too, he would have to stop this torture… "You wouldn't hurt him!"

There was a sharp slap, and that stunned Alois into silence as he felt the sting on his face. It was not overly harsh, not a blow meant particularly to hurt or bruise, but the uncaring cruelty in the action was clear.

"Wouldn't I?"

Alois began to sob again, speaking this time incoherently, as Sebastian continued. "Now, I am going to leave. You may scream as much as you like, but no one will hear you," a shiver, like ice, ran down Alois' spine, as the shadow-tendrils pulled themselves away to coalesce in the figure, an unearthly thing that seemed to exist almost incorporeal, nothing but smoke and the distorted image of a man... "except me."

And then he left. Alois could hear his footsteps walking away, making a sound like metal against hard stone. He cried and screamed even louder, but no one came, no one came.

/

The screams had almost subsided, but the boy was still in a state of terror, not quite tired enough to progress into the uncaring oblivion of exhaustion, when Sebastian stepped back into the room, Alois Trancy's red ring held in his palm. He knelt before the shivering boy and slipped the ring onto his finger, while Alois looked up at him, with terror, anger, and then, suddenly, coherence. "This ring," he said, "Do you mean to put me back… no, no!" he screamed again as Sebastian pulled on that soul he could almost feel hovering within the fragile body; the bonds were loosened with the terror he had experienced and the disorienting miasma of New Moon Drop tea. It pulled, and as it did so, began to flow like a hovering, blue-white light, toward the magickal vessel Claude had made of the red ring. The shriek became a high-pitched hum, the air picking up in a sudden swirling wind around the forced passage of the soul. And from the limp, shaking body, the boy raised his head, the seal in his eye, that had been unlit before, glowing a blinding purple as the soul that remained there looked at him with all the force of its concentration.

"Sebastian," Ciel said, quietly.

"Young Master," Sebastian said, pulling his glove off with his teeth to let his own side of the contract shine bright.

The soul of Alois Trancy flashed and shook the air around them as it battled the force of the returning spell, the bond that held it to the ring, but something was wrong. There was still some thread, something holding it to that body, that made Ciel gasp in sudden pain; it would not settle in the ring, it could not. At last Ciel cried out and fell limp; the soul of Alois Trancy ricocheting from the confines of the spell and rushing back into that body.

"No," Sebastian said, in helpless shock, reaching forward as though he could somehow tug the soul away. But it had passed back already, the glimmer dying down until there was nothing else to see.

Sebastian leaned forward, cradling the exhausted body in his arms, unlocking the manacles with shaking hands. "Young master," he said, softly. Ciel did not stir, and he tightened his hands around his soul, one gloved, one—the contract seal black and dormant—still ungloved, carding his hands through his hair, pressing the small body toward his own, wrapping his arms and legs around him, as though he could fix everything if he could only get close enough; the bird-flutter of the boy's heart under his cold lips.

"I failed..." he said, to the unfeeling blankness of the room. And on Ciel's fingers, the red ring, still.

.

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	13. Chapter 13

_(one day earlier)_

Ciel could hardly keep himself from yawning, almost falling over with tiredness as Lizzy's carriage finally drove away round the bend in the drive, her bright hair whipping out behind her as she leaned out the window to wave at him. He waved back, until she had gone beyond his view. _I still have paperwork unfinished_ , Ciel reflected moodily, resisting the urge to put it off for the rest of the day. For who knew what would come on the morrow… no. He would not think of that. It was merely good business, after all, to be up on one's paperwork. Still, as he sorted through letters, requests, sums and figures—this many toys produced in what branch of the Funtom corporation, this many candies, cakes, sweets, perfumes, food—he found it hard to keep his eyes open, almost nodding off a few times as the afternoon grew later. He asked Sebastian for more tea and pushed through the rest of his paperwork until he found himself staring blankly and unable to concentrate any longer, and Sebastian said that he might consider turning to bed early.

"There's no need for that," Ciel said with a glare, but he was unable to hide his sudden yawn as he did, and Sebastian gave him that _look_ that he made when he thought Ciel was being silly and that if Ciel didn't make this an order (which he oughtn't to, because he was more mature than that) then he was going to use his prerogative as Ciel's tutor and guardian to insist on it.

"I told you, I'm fine!" Ciel snapped irritably; although he could tell, himself, that he was much too tired to think rationally about anything, he couldn't stop himself from reacting.

"It is in fact unequivocally clear from your actions that you are not, no matter what you say," Sebastian said, taking the papers before him and looking through them quickly. "How many of these have you gotten through in the past hour? Two? On an ordinary day, you can do at least five of this length an hour. This is not only ridiculous, it's also non-productive."

"For your information, I'm being quite productive," Ciel growled. "And if you're not going to bring me any cake, you can leave. I think the banisters haven't been polished at all today—maybe you can take care of that with all this excess energy you're spending on meddling, after you've finished the parlor floor."

"Of course, my lord," Sebastian said. "I didn't know the state of the banisters troubled you so much." His tone was sugary sweet. "I will get on it as soon as you go to bed."

"I told you," Ciel forced out through gritted teeth, "I am _not_ going to bed—" he stopped short at the unfortunately petulant sound of those words, but lifted his chin and stared Sebastian down regardless.

"Ever, my lord?" Sebastian asked.

Ciel flushed. "I never said _that_ ," he said. "But I'll stay up as long as I please. I—" he yawned suddenly, and glared daggers at the smile that Sebastian didn't even try to hide. The butler stepped forward, lifting Ciel easily into his arms and carrying him out of the study.

"What are you doing?" Ciel demanded. "Put me down this instant! I demand it!"

"If you insist on acting like a child, you will be treated like one," Sebastian said. "Now, we may proceed to bed like this, or if you would rather, you can get down and walk on your own two feet."

"Put. Me. Down."

Sebastian let him down without further argument, and followed Ciel to his rooms. _Who does he think he is_ , Ciel thought, fuming. _What a presumptuous—arrogant—infuriating man!_ I _am his master, he answers to_ me _! What right does he have to tell me when to go to bed?_ The incredible nature of this inner monologue was not lost on Ciel, but that did not change the fact of his irritation, though by the time he had finally entered his bedchamber, he had progressed to sullen compliance.

The truth was, Ciel was quite tired. He had slept hardly a few hours the night before, after being rescued from the Trancy manor, and with his heightened state of unease at that time, and with all that had happened, he had had not a moment of true rest for days, even when he had been able to sleep. And yet— and yet—

"Stay with me until I fall asleep," Ciel said, as Sebastian turned to leave.

"Yes, my lord," Sebastian answered, and returned to kneel by his bedside.

Ciel had no dearth of nightmares, but it was not nightmares he feared tonight—it was what might happen after that, when the morning came. _If Alois Trancy wakes again, and not I_ , he thought, _If he does, and I am again trapped..._

"Tell me a story," Ciel said at last, when the silence had grown so long and deep that he felt he must break it with something, allowing anything other than his own terrible thoughts to intrude on him.

"What kind of story would you prefer, my lord?" Sebastian asked.

Ciel turned around from his stomach, where he had pressed his face into the pillow and wished so long for sleep, to see that calm face of his butler. "I don't know," he said.

For a moment, Sebastian answered nothing, and then a fleeting thought seemed to pass over his face. "I will return shortly, my lord," he said. Ciel waited as he walked away, wondering if, in the interim, he would fall into sleep without wishing for it, but he was still awake when his butler walked back, a thickly bound book of Poe's writings under his arms.

Fear of nightmares had never stopped him from reading Poe's stories—but Ciel was surprised that Sebastian would pick such a thing as reading material at this hour, when he had past chided Ciel for that very choice. _Is it some kind of clue?_ Ciel thought. _It must be._

Sebastian turned purposefully to some spot within the book, and began reading the Latin that prefaced the story.

 _Why this one?_ Ciel thought. The descriptions of the unnamed narrator's trial made him shiver, the cold faces of the judges blurring in Ciel's mind into the equally unreachable moth-masked figures of his own terrible past, an incoherent sentence made without his knowledge, the candles of the angels abandoning him. It was a terrible irony, and Sebastian read it knowingly, his dark eyes fixed on Ciel all the while. But somehow he did sleep, falling into fitful, tormented dreams.

"Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember, amid earnest struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had lapsed..." Sebastian read, and Ciel heard the words with an echoing clarity as the room vanished into that nothingness of what cannot be looked at, and instead there was only the bloodstained platform and the cage, the terror of that time.

 _Sebastian_ , he called, within the dream. _Sebastian_!

 _I am here_ , the bird-figure answered.

.

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	14. Chapter 14

"These shadows of memory tell, indistinctly, of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence to the center of the white-pillared room, heedless of my screaming."

 _No_ , Ciel thought. But the bird was there, as the brand, the cage, flickered in and out of nightmarish existence.

— _Sebastian_?

 _I told you you would become aware, did I not?_

The limits of that inter-knowledge between him and Alois. They could know only what the other experienced through the body and the senses, but the secrecy of their own minds, of their own dreams—that had not been traversed—for they were different souls, which could only be connected, not cohered. The dark-winged bird fluttered from its dead and withered branch, hopping toward Ciel's immobilized body, lying upon the bloodied altar. It beat its wings and the air in the room resounded hollowly, it landed by his head and peered down with slitted purple eyes.

 _I'm dreaming this_ , Ciel thought.

 _Precisely_ , the bird replied.

 _But is it my dream?_

 _It is our dream._

Ciel sat up, naked and shivering, to look. The bodies of his tormentors were strewn across the floor, filling the white room with red. The bird hopped forward again, landing on his wrist and digging its claws into his skin. Around them, feathers drifted, impossibly slowly, through the air, hardly moving, suspended in a single instant.

"My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath."

There was another body in the sudden darkness, and Ciel could make out every detail, though there was no light to do so. It was a body like his own in every respect, but it was not his body; this body cried and whimpered in fear of the dark. Ciel sat beside the boy, who could not see him, the burning talons of the bird still on his arm. Ciel could recognize him; the boy was Alois Trancy. The bird, flying down beside him, handed Alois a teacup filled with a red ring.

 _Do you understand, young master?_ the bird asked, watching him.

 _Yes_ , Ciel said. _Do it_. _That's an order_.

The boy writhed on the ground, his hands to his throat, choking on the red, glowing ring, until his gasping breaths ceased and his hands went still.

" _An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss, calling me up from the depths of confusion and despair."_

 _._

 _._

 _._


	15. Chapter 15

"Se… Sebastian," Ciel gasped. His eyes flew open to the darkness, and the old, familiar smells around him; a few moments later he perceived that they were against the dirt floor, Sebastian lying with Ciel atop him, held tightly by his butler, clutched as if in fear that he would slip away. At once the reddish eyes opened, and looked at him. It felt, Ciel thought, as if he had been falling down a very long slope for some time now, and just when he thought he had reached solid ground, it slipped away beneath him, tumbling once more.

When Ciel spoke, his voice was cold. "You failed," he said. He took in a shaking breath, anger winning out over his fear and that twisting feeling of vertigo that still spun through him.

"I must apologize, young master," Sebastian started, only to to be interrupted.

"What happened?" Ciel snapped out. "You said it would work!"

"I am afraid I do not know the answer," Sebastian said. "I thought I had accounted for everything, but I must have been mistaken."

"Sebastian," Ciel said, darkly. "I can't… go on, like this." He stopped, the words struggling in his mouth. "I can feel him," he hissed. "In the back of my mind, like… sickness. It's foul… and… you _said_ you could fix it!"

"Young master…"

With sudden energy, Ciel sat up, pulling away from Sebastian's hold and delivering a cracking blow to his butler's face, hard enough to make the blood rise to his cheek. "What am I supposed to do now!" Ciel shouted. "How am I to take care of my _finances_ , how am I to serve as the Watchdog if I can't even trust myself… how can I… I even… what am I supposed to do now?" he trailed off, breathing heavily, to find that in his ire, a stray tear had found its way from his eye. He swiped it away, angrily, and stared at the stone of the wall behind them.

Sebastian reached his arms toward him again, resting at the small of his back, and Ciel could feel through the fabric of his nightgown the soft fabric of Sebastian's gloved hand, the burning heat of the uncovered one pressing against his skin.

"Well?" Ciel asked, again, quieter. "What shall I do now, Sebastian, that your great plan has failed us?"

"There is more yet still to try," Sebastian said, sitting up at that and resting his back against the wall. Ciel curled up closer as he did so, leaning back against Sebastian's chest as he huffed in irritation. "It _galls_ me to have you be so _vague_ ," he bit out.

"As it does myself, my lord," Sebastian admitted. "Be assured that I share in your disappointment."

"I'm not _disappointed_ ," Ciel said. "I am angry. I expect more from you, Sebastian."

"Yes, my lord," Sebastian said. "I understand."

"Do you?" Ciel asked, leaning back to look Sebastian full in the face, unclouded blue and the misted purple of the contract. "You _will_ succeed, Sebastian. I will not have Alois continue to live like a worm inside me. Whatever you have to do, you will do. You will not fail me again."

"...Yes, my lord," Sebastian breathed, softly, the faint, sudden glow of his eyes casting his face into strange contrast, an uncanniness Ciel was long used to.

"The game isn't over," Ciel said. "You have made sure of that, and as long as I play I will not lose." This was the one thing he knew. Whatever setbacks they faced, he would not give up while there was breath left in his body. Ciel curled his hand around Sebastian's contracted one, his fingers fitting into the space of Sebastian's palm. The purple flared, fitfully, across the black mark and his own eye, an eternal agreement.

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	16. Chapter 16

However deep the darkness might gather, the Earth was still caught within the thrall of time, and the sun returned, at last. Sebastian awoke, confused. It had been many ages since he had last slept; usually, falling into that state required sustained concentration, but he did not remember deciding to sleep the previous night. With a rush, he remembered his own failure, the proof of it lying curled on his lap, both eyes closed, a ring of sparkling red, like wine, upon his finger. The gentle breath of his young master moved in and out of his body, his soft lips parted, head resting upon his butler's chest, entirely vulnerable, that pale skin, those fragile bones, held together by only a gleam of brightness. _But can I protect you from this_? Sebastian thought. His young master's body still smelled of sweat, though it had dried in the night, and the scent of fear that Alois had given off so strongly had dissipated into the deep earth, giving way to the calm beats of his young master's heart, cradled in the arms of his devil.

Sebastian drew his hands closer about his young master, dimly aware as the uniformity of darkness gave way, infinitesimally, to the cold definition of dawn. What had he done wrong? Sebastian thought. The spell ought to have worked—he had repeated Claude's recipe in almost every particular, and indeed, the soul had begun to pull free—but then, somehow, it had not been able to complete the journey.

The young master's wrists were rubbed raw where Alois Trancy had pulled them heedless of the cuffs biting deep in his terror, and the marks had faded to purpling bruises, the edge of one scabbed cut, a hand still holding onto his. Sebastian brushed his fingers across the back of that hand, lightly across the smooth, unblemished skin, and tightened his grip, a sickly white blooming where his nails dug crescents against his young master's skin. Ciel tried to move away, weak and uncoordinated in sleep, but settled as Sebastian's grip proved unmoving. He mumbled, slightly, a bit of Sebastian's name.

"I am here," Sebastian answered, quietly, pressing a small kiss into the dark strands of Ciel's hair, soft and silken-cool, infused with his master's scent.

Like a spark, the brilliance of Ciel Phantomhive's soul burned on, threaded through with the uncertain, sour aftertaste of Alois Trancy's inhabitance. Still, for moments to come, he stayed there, unwilling to move or wake his little lord. He didn't think he could bear the sight of that taunting reminder of Claude's, if Alois were to be the one to wake. It was indeed the most exquisite punishment that could have been devised, and the lock and key were his own. At any moment, he might still free himself, take the souls as they were and move on, but to leave his work of art in such a state, half-finished and sullied, filled him with shame. To eat his dinner now would be to suffer a meal of ashes, regret like honeyed syrup. What should have been theirs alone had been polluted, the exquisite melody had been broken.

Sebastian raised the hand held in his own, feeling the fragile pulse of his master's wrist under his fangs, still steady and unafraid. He breathed onto that fragile skin, licking the taste of his failure from the darkened blood like rotting fruit.

And yet—he could not give it up for lost. Any demon's aesthetic would surely allow such a thing, under such circumstances as these, but Sebastian found himself unable to contemplate that possibility. After all his long ages of waiting, of distaste and the gluttony of bland souls, to willingly part from _this_ would never be an option—and Claude had seen it, disgusted by his devotion to an insect, to a dinner, no matter how fine. _Perhaps he was right,_ Sebastian thought, _I have changed, I am not the demon I was—but I have become so much more._ Nothing could convince him to give up the exquisite for the mindless existence of a beast, no power, angel or demon, could bring him to throw away what had pulled him from the base existence of confusion, isolation, ennui.

So he sat there, as the sun slowly heaved itself up, and he could hear the other servants stirring in their beds, almost ready to wake. And at last he stood, his young master cradled in his arms, and took the stairs out of the cellar, up to the first floor and down the long hall to his lord's chamber, where he laid him down under clean sheets. Ciel made a small noise as Sebastian slid his arms away, leaving him in the coldness of the untouched bed, and Sebastian brushed a hand to his brow, standing and looking at the child for one long moment.

 _I will not leave what's mine_ , he thought. _Not for anything in heaven or hell. Not for any feast that could be offered. I will have you or no other—until the end._

* * *

 _...{end of part three}..._

 _._

 _._

 _._


	17. Part 4: A Single Thread

Talk not to me: I will go sit and weep  
Till I can find occasion of revenge.

— _The Taming of the Shrew_

* * *

 **Part four:** _A Single Thread..._

* * *

Alois woke up near noon, still in the wrong manor, still with the wrong butler. Sebastian was standing near the windows, his back toward the bed, looking out into the sunlit scene outside; the green lawns, the dark and dappled trees. _I wish he would just leave_ , Alois thought. _Why does_ he _need to be here? Of course, it's because of_ Ciel Phantomhive _again, always Ciel Phantomhive. So perfect, so delectable_. He scowled as he put on his clothes and, as Sebastian took the discarded nightshirt away, made his way down to breakfast. Sebastian was there too, with a perfectly-cooked meal.

Alois pushed everything around his plate into a mush, eating sporadically. When he was ten, just returned with the contract new and uncertain between them, Sebastian had been as bad at being a butler as he was being an earl. The food had been like fairy-food; good to look at, but repulsive to taste. Now it was as—perfect—as—anything.

"I don't like this," Alois announced abruptly.

"Oh?" Sebastian asked. "Is there something I can do?" He looked at Alois with the hint of a mocking smile. Alois knew what Sebastian was thinking; he was so easy to read, compared to Claude. He was thinking _I wish I could kill him_ and _he slouches in a different way than_ my _young master_ and _I have to be perfect-perfect-perfect to make up for the fact that I couldn't force him into the ring_.

Alois was trying to remember the last time Claude and he had talked like Ciel Phantomhive and Sebastian the previous night. He didn't think they ever had. _Of course, Claude and I have a connection_ , Alois amended. _We don't_ need _words_. But he had never been in Claude's arms like that either. He wished he could forget how gentle Sebastian had held Ciel. He didn't put Ciel's face in his hands, like Claude did, though. And they never had kissed. So he had nothing to wish for, really.

But he still did.

"Yes," Alois said. "Take this away, make something else." He pushed the plate to the corner of the pristine white linen.

"I'm afraid there is no other food available at this time," Sebastian said, courteously. "You'll have to go without." And he picked up the plate and took it toward the door. Alois stood up, in sudden anger at the way that his order had been overturned with such sly malice. He grabbed for the table knife beside his plate and flung it wildly at Sebastian. It would hardly have hurt him even if it connected, but Sebastian's hand flung out and caught it, vibrating, between his fingers.

"How dare you?" Alois said. "What kind of a butler are you, anyway? You bloody shit!"

He walked across the room to meet Sebastian and kicked out at him, but Sebastian stepped out of the way quite easily and caught Alois' arm before his second strike could connect.

"Now now," he said. "What you do to your own servants is your affair, but you are not my master, and I am tolerating you for one reason only. I have no time for your brattish tantrums. Do you understand me?"

"Bugger off!"

"Perhaps not, then," Sebastian sighed. "It's such a pity… you have an interesting soul, you know," he continued, "but you spoil it all with your uncultivated manner."

"Like that matters to you!" Alois spat. "You hate me just because I'm not Ciel!"

"I merely thought you might be interested in the observation," Sebastian said mildly, "for your own improvement."

"What do you care if I improve myself?" Alois said at last, pulling away. "I'm damned whether I do or not."

"Exactly," Sebastian said. "One would think it might make you strive to enjoy this world while you can. But then again… I suppose that ship has sailed already. You're nothing but a dirty leech now… a soul clinging to earthly existence against your inevitable end."

Alois tensed, grinding his teeth together and clenching his fists as Sebastian stepped forward behind him, until he stood close enough that Alois could feel the heat from his body pressing smotheringly against him. "You act so lordlike, but you will always be a base-born wretch, and you know it," he continued, in a soft, persuasive murmur. "Everything you have, you stole… your name, your title, and this body…" Sebastian reached one hand to hover, musingly, hardly a centimeter above the skin of Alois' throat.

Alois swallowed. He was still angry, and terrified too; tears glimmered at the edge of his eyes. He had to hold himself very still in order not to bolt, and he fancied he could hear the cruel smile of Sebastian behind him.

"Better a thief than a fool," he managed, at last. "At least I'm not a lap-dog like Ciel. He couldn't keep Claude from taking him, and all he could manage to conjure up was a demon like you, who can't even complete his master's orders."

Sebastian's hand came down on his skin, and he tightened his grip enough to make Alois gasp.

"I'm right," he choked out, even as his throat convulsed. He clenched his fists even tighter against his sides and did not fight back. "You're a disgrace… aren't you?"

Sebastian let go suddenly, and Alois tumbled to the floor, bringing his hands to his throat instinctively and wheezing as he stared up at Sebastian. The butler stood stock-still, almost unmoved, but for the magenta fire in his slitted eyes.

Alois grimaced, baring his teeth at the butler as he stood up on unsteady legs, and he shuffled backward, not breaking the gaze between them until he fumblingly found the doorway and ducked into the hall. The tears had begun to fall, quick and hot over his cheeks, and it glimmered over the sight from his uncovered eye as he stared in horrible anticipation at the doorway. Even without seeing him, he felt as if Sebastian was still watching, and he dreaded that the butler would step quietly out of the room. But he never did.

At last, tearing his glance from the door, Alois sprinted down the hall, running by memory alone through the corridors and down… He wanted the company of humans, something real and mortal, so that he couldn't feel that dark gaze anymore. The kitchen was where he found himself in the end, and he looked around with a wary curiosity… Ciel had hardly been here, and the room was almost unfamiliar. There were a row of ovens, pots and pans, and the quiet, clean place seemed almost lived-in, almost like a normal house, even with carefully sorted grenades amid the chef's knives and the rifles on the walls.

 _My life_ , Alois thought. _I didn't think of it before. I'm dead, aren't I? My body must be decomposing already. How awful._ He shuddered, wondering where it might be lying at this very moment, and whether the worms were eating away at his face and crawling into the insides of his stomach. He looked down at the hands that were not his own; a little smaller, a little softer, unfamiliar from the skin pulled over the top to the blood and meat and bones underneath.

 _...I wish Claude were here_ , Alois thought.

/

"Is there anything you need, young m… Alois?" Bard asked, seeing the boy slip into the kitchen and then stand, pressing his back to the wall. He recognized the look in the kid's red-rimmed eye, the kind of terror you'd feel sometimes, at night, when you knew the enemy was close but couldn't place from where he would come. Bard wiped his hands on his apron and stepped forward, trying to catch Alois' gaze, until at last the sharp blue eye latched onto him.

He looked so much like the young master. But even if Sebastian hadn't warned them who had awakened that morning, Bard would have known this wasn't Ciel. There was something too unguarded in his look, too desperate. And Ciel would never have run down here, even if something had scared him to this degree.

He would have called for Sebastian.

"Do you want something?" Bard asked, calmly, slowly. "A snack? Tea or something?"

The boy trembled, looking almost ready to bolt, but then at last, stiffly, he nodded. "You have—" he started, almost too quiet to hear, and then he cleared his throat. "You have any booze?"

"Uh…" Bard stopped short. He scratched his head, the flour on his hands drifting its way into his hair. It wasn't that he didn't have a little stash of his own (the good wine was locked up in the butler's pantry, not that Bard would ever think of taking from it even if it wasn't—not so much out of deference to the young master, more out of fear of Sebastian's wrath) but he wasn't sure if he really ought to offer it to this boy.

On the other hand, what could it hurt? Maybe the kid could use something to steady his nerves.

"Sure," Bard said. "I might be able to find something," he continued. "You want to sit down?" he asked, searching around for a stool before pushing it up to the large counter. Alois stepped forward and sat himself gingerly down, still looking around like any moment something terrible might jump out at him. Bard stepped aside to find something strong to pour for the kid, coming back with a pint filled less than halfway up.

Alois grabbed the draft as soon as Bard gave it to him and took a large swallow, grimacing at the strength of the whiskey, but after a moment he seemed to have calmed a little, holding it between both hands and staring down into the amber liquid.

Bard went back to work, making the crust for a pot-pie; he deposited the dough on the counter near Alois and began to roll it out, casting a glance over at the kid as he did so.

"Thanks," Alois said, at last.

"No problem," Bard said. He wasn't sure if he should pry, but Alois was an unknown factor, and the more he could puzzle out about this strange situation, the better. "Is there something I should be watching out for, out there?" he asked. He kept his tone light and even and didn't look Alois' way as he spoke, continuing to roll the dough flat and round.

Alois laughed, a little hysterically. "Yes," he said. "But you wouldn't believe me."

"I don't know," Bard answered. "I believe a few things."

Alois set down the pint with a clink on the stone counter. "Maybe you would, after all," he said. "But I can't trust you."

"All I've been ordered to do is keep an eye on you," Bard said, "And make sure you don't run off."

Alois took a shaking breath. "How much do you know about Sebastian?" he said.

"Ah," Bard answered. Of course it would be about him. The enigmatic butler had his secrets, as they all did, but his were even more impenetrable. He had some kind of powers, no doubt about it—no ordinary human could move so fast, or survive such fatal wounds, again and again. And just like them, he'd come without a past, nothing he wanted to keep from before. Bard could understand that. Mei-Rin & Finny probably even more. "He's a private person," Bard said at last.

"Of course," Alois said. "Do you trust him?"

"With my life," Bard answered, unhesitatingly. "Or… yeah. At least if it isn't a choice between me an' the young master."

"He cares quite a bit about Ciel Phantomhive," Alois said, noncommittally.

"Sebastian rescued him, as far as I can make out," Bard said. "Seems like you'd know more than I do, though, if you have his memories."

"He told you about that," Alois said. "Yes. I do."

He didn't say more about it. Bard felt relieved—Ciel's past, which he'd always been so shy to speak about, didn't seem like it should be told by Alois Trancy. It seemed disrespectful, to listen to that.

"Was it him that scared you? Sebastian?"

Alois looked down and nodded, and Bard frowned at the faint bruise visible around his throat. _What did he say_ , he thought, _to rile Sebastian that much_? He needed to have a talk with Sebastian, anyhow. No matter what the kid had done, he should know better than to get violent. Alois, to all accounts, seemed to be as much the victim of that dark magician as Ciel. And he was in Ciel's body…

It was an uneasy feeling, the protectiveness Bard felt for him, a combination of sympathy for Alois and a more calculated reminder about Ciel. Still.

"Finny should be back soon," Bard said, "I won't leave until he comes, okay?"

Alois nodded.

The pie had almost been finished—except for the baking itself—when Bard heard Finny at the kitchen door.

"Ooh, smells good!" Finny said, hanging up his hat, before his eyes flicked to Alois sitting by the counter. He looked at Bard questioningly.

"It seems like Sebastian gave the kid a scare," Bard said quietly. "Stay with him, will you? I'm gonna go find Sebastian."

"Of course!" Finny said, looking back with sudden concern. He stepped into the kitchen. "Hello, sir," he said brightly. Bard couldn't quite hear Alois's mumbled reply, but he took the chance to slip out of the kitchen after setting the pie in the oven. At least this way, he might not get impatient waiting for it to cook, Bard thought, wryly.

.

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	18. Chapter 18

Sebastian was in his room, as it turned out—nothing could convince Bard more that something unusual had gone down, for Sebastian, even if he was quick enough to do every ordinary chore with plenty of time to spare, always liked to keep busy. He was always up and out of his room before the other servants got up for the day, and he didn't go to sleep until after them each night. They traded half-jokes, sometimes, that he never slept at all, and who knew, maybe he didn't.

But he was there now, for when Bard knocked, hesitantly, on the closed door, he could hear Sebastian's weary voice from behind it.

"What do you need now," he said.

Bard turned the handle and pushed the door open, looking around at the pristine, blank walls and the dust-free, empty surface of his dresser-top. Sebastian was sitting on his bed in his shirtsleeves, and he glanced up with an odd look in his eye as Bard hovered uncertainly in the doorway.

"Well?" Sebastian said. "Don't tell me the kitchen's on fire."

"No, Mr. Sebastian," Bard said. "Everything's fine."

Sebastian sighed.

The scene was so uncomfortable that Bard almost made up a hasty excuse to retreat, so unsettling was the usually unflappable butler's manner, but he reminded himself why he'd come up here.

"What happened with you and Alois just now?" Bard said bluntly.

"I'd rather not speak of it," Sebastian said.

Bard stepped into the room, leaving the door open behind him, and crossed his arms. "I understand that, sir," he said, "but the kid came down scared half out of his wits with a bruise on his neck. What the hell happened?"

Sebastian chuckled. "Yes," he said. After a moment, he met Bard's confused expression. "You won't let up about this, will you," he said.

"No," Bard answered. "It's not like you. Frankly, I'm worried. I know we've all been through a lot this past year," he said. "It's understandable to get rattled. But if you don't talk it out with someone you trust, it's only gonna get worse."

"And you know this through your extensive experience," Sebastian said mockingly.

It really infuriated Bard, how high-and-mighty Sebastian could get sometimes, but right now, he could recognize that this was only a distraction tactic, and somehow, it didn't make him as angry as it usually did—as Sebastian was probably aiming for it to.

Bard glanced around, snagging the chair and sitting down.

Sebastian gave another sigh, filled with long-suffering. He was quiet for so long that Bard started to wonder what he would do if Sebastian just decided to wait him out. He knew already who would win that one. But before he had quite decided to cede the game, Sebastian spoke.

"Alois found something to dislike about his breakfast, and attempted to attack me; I stopped him and told him he was a pathetic worm,"

Bard laughed in sudden surprise, half-horrified, half-admiring. "You told him that?"

"In essence," Sebastian said. "I'm glad you find it amusing." he paused, for a moment, and then continued. "Alois then intimated that I had failed in my duties to the young master, as I had been unable to stop him from being taken and enchanted, or to break the enchantment."

"Oh," Bard said, with a wince. Well, that might explain it. There was nothing Sebastian prided himself on more than his ability to do whatever his master wished of him, and though he had said nothing about it, this latest blow had hit him even harder than the other servants. It had been clear enough to see, if you knew him. _The question is_ , Bard thought, _does Alois know this because he has Ciel's memories, or because he worked it out for himself?_ If the latter, then perhaps there was more to the kid than there appeared.

"Well," Bard said, "I'm sure you know your reactions were out of hand."

Sebastian looked away. "I may have… lost my composure, for a moment," he said brittlely. "It won't happen again."

"I didn't think it would," Bard said. But the very fact that Sebastian felt the need to justify himself to Bard told him that the butler was shaken deeply, and he wasn't sure what to do. Sebastian had never seemed to ascribe to human failure. He had never seemed capable of it. It was funny, now, to think—after all, couldn't anyone fail, even someone as perfect as Sebastian? But somehow, he'd never believed it until it happened.

Sebastian, it seemed, hadn't realized this could happen either.

"Is there anyone you know who might know more about the enchantment?" Bard said at last. "Someone with that specialty, maybe?"

Sebastian looked over at Bard, almost surprised. Bard wasn't sure what to make of it. At last, he answered. "I might, actually," he said thoughtfully. "Thank you."

Bard straightened up, feeling unaccountably proud at Sebastian's words of praise, which he gave so sparely.

"And, Bard?"

"Yes?"

"The pot-pie is burning," Sebastian said.

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	19. Chapter 19

"He did that to you?" Finny asked, aghast, staring at Alois' throat. "No," he said. "Sebastian wouldn't…"

"He did," Alois answered, tears shining in his eyes, and his voice wavered, his hand shaking as he picked up his pint for another drink. He tilted his throat up to swallow the last drops, his tongue licking at the edge, and Finny found his gaze resting uncomfortably on the dark bruising marks tilted toward the light.

"I think," Alois breathed, as he tremblingly laid the cup down, "I think he hates me, because I was enchanted into Ciel… I'm afraid of him."

Finny gasped. He wanted to insist, again, that Sebastian would never. Yes, the butler had a fearsome temper, but he'd never done any more than cuff the servants when they'd done something like accidentally douse the whole front lawn with weedkiller. He'd never laid a hand on Ciel—it wouldn't be at all proper. And the harsh bruises on Ciel's—Alois's—neck now spoke of more than anger. You didn't strangle someone… unless… unless you really wanted to hurt him. Maybe even kill him.

Finny had thought so many things of Sebastian that had turned out to be false… he'd thought Sebastian would always be there to protect the young master, and he hadn't been able to at all. And now this. This whole situation, the fact that Ciel wasn't even Ciel right now, was more Sebastian's fault than poor Alois'.

"Even—even if he did," Finny said, stuttering over his words as though he were blaspheming, feeling a sick and horrible thrill, "I'd protect you. You believe me, don't you?"

"Really?" Alois asked, the slightest hint of a smile on the edge of his mouth. "Would you? Even to stand up against… him?"

"If it was the right thing to do," Finny affirmed, reaching out without thinking to take Alois' hands. He looked down, realizing what he had done, and pulled back, blushing. "I'm sorry," he said. "I've been too familiar…"

"Not at all," Alois said. "Indeed, I'd like it if we were… friends?" he looked up at Finny, his blue eye shining. "I've never had a friend before," he said. "No one's ever promised to protect me, without wanting something in return," he added, in a quieter voice.

Finny nodded, his own eyes filling with tears. "Of course," he said. "Of course I'll be your friend, sir—"

"Alois," Alois said, softly, reaching one hand to his arm.

"Alois," Finny repeated. The poor child looked so exhausted, so scared, with a vulnerability that Ciel had shown only rarely. When Alois leaned toward him to wrap his arms about him and sink his face into his chest, Finny reached up, hesitantly, to brush a hand through his hair.

 _I won't let you be hurt again_ , he thought fiercely. _Not you or Ciel_. _If Sebastian can't help you, I will_.

Alois sniffled, and his breathing, which had been fast and uneven, slowly evened out. He clutched his hands tightly in Finny's shirt.

"Are you feeling better?" Finny asked at last. Alois nodded.

At that moment, Bard ran through the doorway, his feet almost skidding to a stop before the oven. "Finnian," he barked, "weren't you watching the oven? The pot-pie's burning!"

"Burning?" Finny asked, looking around. He'd seen quite a few dinners come to ash in the kitchen, but they usually involved quite a bit more fire.

Bard reached for the oven door, pulling the pot-pie out with one oven mitt. "Come on, come on," he murmured, pulling it from the oven. Then he squinted at it doubtfully.

"Doesn't look too black to me," he said.

Finny walked over to peer over his shoulder. "I guess it's a bit brown," he said. "Maybe it hasn't finished burning yet?"

Bard poked at it experimentally, and sniffed. "A little smoky," he admitted. "But it looks fine,"

"Definitely edible," Finny agreed, relieved. Usually, when Bard burned something, it tasted more like char than real food.

He looked around to Alois, but the boy had slipped from his stool and was now standing in the doorway of the kitchen. He smiled as Finny met his eyes and waved slightly before slipping out the door.

He should go after him, Finny thought—but he'd spent too long away from his job already. So, with one last, lingering glance at the door, he walked back out into the garden, his mind whirling with dark and uncomfortable thoughts.

/

Sebastian had played into his hands with this, Alois thought, as he slipped through the doorway. It was laughably easy to turn Finny's sympathies toward him; and the best of it was, that he hadn't told a single falsehood. Even if someone were to try to reassure the gardener that he was reading things wrong, there was nothing they could tell him—nothing that could be told—that might easily change the picture Alois had painted. He smiled, ducking into the dark-panelled billiards room and swinging himself onto the edge of the table. He didn't know how to play, but he sent the balls spinning across the dark green felted surface, clacking into one another. What funny games these nobles have, he thought, remembering meetings with the Aristocrats of Evil in this very room... Madam Red, and Lau, both having betrayed him, their presence now only odd, distorted memories.

 _It's 'cause they're such prudes,_ Alois thought; _they can't get themselves off, so they play with shafts and balls_. He laughed, leaning down until he lay half-on the tabletop, his legs dangling off the edge. The air was thick today, still warm with late-summer, although the billiards room, with its carved walnut, windowless walls, was cool and dark.

 _I can't stay here much longer_ , Alois thought. _I don't want to. This is a wretched place_. He stared upward, squinting into the gloom, and let his thoughts wander. _Claude_ , he thought, _where are you? And how can I reach you?_ He knew there must be a way, if only he could think of it… whatever Sebastian had done to Claude hadn't killed him entirely; the contract still stood.

 _I just need to speak with him_ , Alois thought, frustrated. _And without Ciel Phantomhive finding out!_ He hesitated, then, and let his eyes fall closed. That night… before Sebastian tried to force him back into the ring… he had read that story to Ciel. And Ciel hadn't seemed to be surprised at all with what had happened later. Some sort of code? Possibly… but maybe it was more than that. What had he never been able to see into? Anything Ciel did, Alois would experience too… some of what he felt… but his thoughts were harder to grasp. Out of reach. And his dreams… he had never shared Ciel's dreams. Well, he didn't think so—it was hard to tell, wasn't it, now that they had the same memories to dream about? And yet… if that was so, how very interesting…

Alois was quiet, that night, as he was readied for bed, without acknowledging Sebastian in any way. Sebastian, for his part, seemed equally happy to ignore Alois, even as he handed him his nightclothes and blew out the candles.

 _Just because he knows I hate it_ , Alois thought, with terrible anger. But he stayed silent, and let Sebastian leave the room. And in his mind, he called along the path of his bond with Claude, reaching for the other end of the contract, focusing his mind unwaveringly on that thought as he fell asleep.

 _Come on, Claude_ , Alois thought. _Surely you can hear me now!_

 _._

 _._

 _._


	20. Chapter 20

It was the forest where he had first spoken to Claude, with a spiderweb on his face and a cantrip on his tongue. The air was blue and shiver-silent, and in the pulsating darkness he could almost feel a voice, a glimpse of golden eyes. There was the memory of pincers round his neck, a deathly embrace. Or _was_ it a memory?

Alois looked down at himself. He was nude, in his own skin, his own bones. Ciel Phantomhive was not here.

"Well?" Alois called out, into the emptiness. "I've been calling for you, Claude, and as long as this contract lasts, you have to answer me."

The darkness shivered again; a great and roving eye seemed to look his way; a reflection that shattered Alois into a thousand shards, a thousand identical, fair-haired boys, looking into the abyss, and being regarded.

The warmth on his tongue grew, until it seemed to burn its way through the muscle like a sharp fire, the contract seal igniting.

"Speak to me, Claude," Alois cried, his tongue sending bursts of tingling, unbearable pain through his body at every movement. "This is an order!"

"Yes, your highness."

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, it whispered into his ears and pushed itself into his throat. Alois blinked back tears, straining for a sight of something in the darkness, and realized that the glittering expanse between every tree, covered with snow, were huge webs, that filled the forest from ground to tree-tops, and the darkness was a spider, huge and unmoved, that beckoned to him with one great claw. Alois stepped forward, letting himself fall into the sticky, smothering strands and be lifted up, spinning faster and faster until the white threads had obscured the whole forest around him and stopped up every sound.

But Alois was not afraid.

"So, you found me," Claude said, standing before him. Alois laughed, a sobbing laugh, and crawled forward to clutch an arm about his leg, so that Claude couldn't turn away.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I'll do anything for you, don't you know that?" He looked up into Claude's unreachable face. "I can free you… Whatever it is Sebastian's done, I'll undo it, I'll unlock any chain…"

"Will you?" Claude said, at last. And finally he knelt down, gazing carefully into Alois' eyes, as if considering. "It won't be easy," he said at last.

"I don't care," Alois answered.

"Then," Claude said, "you must go to where my heart is buried, and take it from the ground, and bring it close to your contract seal. When you do, I will find myself again. I will be reassembled through your will."

"Yes, of course," Alois said. "Where is your heart?"

"In the garden…"

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	21. Chapter 21

"...interesting. I would have to get a closer look to know for certain."

Ciel opened his eyes, wondering who had been speaking as he woke, and looked over to the side of his bedroom, where a long-red-haired reaper was conversing quietly with Sebastian.

"What are you doing here!" he said at once, in sudden alarm, sitting up in his bed and reaching for the gun under his pillow in one motion, holding it pointed and ready at the brilliantly-clad figure. "Sebastian—what's going on," he demanded. Although the reaper had not moved against them the last time they met, he was obviously a wild card—and Ciel couldn't help the instinctive feeling of revulsion and alarm, stronger now that he realized what he had remembered in that red coat. Grell, that betraying butler… the reason why his aunt was now dead.

"Grell is here to offer his expert opinion on your condition," Sebastian said smoothly.

"...In my bedroom," Ciel said flatly. "Was this really necessary?" He put the gun down beside him, within easy reach, and eyed Grell warily.

"I wished to have him observe you when Alois could not possibly be listening in," Sebastian explained.

"It's not like I wanted to be here," Grell complained, with a long-suffering scowl. "But Sebastian-dear insisted. Apparently you're worth a lot to the demon," he said.

"Yes, I seem to be," Ciel said drily.

"Well," Grell continued, "I've learned all I can from a preliminary observation. If you'd like me to continue, I could probably figure out exactly what's keeping you tied to Alois Trancy."

"...Continue?" Ciel said shortly. "Explain."

"Well, you'd have to go to sleep again, which would give me a little door into your dreams, and therefore your cinematic record, so I can see where the tangle is. Of course, I could also just use my death scythe—" the reaper, suddenly grinning a maniacal shark's grin, reached into a space in the air near his coat and pulled a long, red-handled scythe from nowhere, the modified, sawtooth blade whirring.

"That will not be required," Sebastian said firmly, pulling Grell's hand down.

"Oh, you never let me have any fun," Grell pouted.

Sebastian continued to look at Grell sternly, until, with a mutter, he folded his scythe away, and turned back to Ciel. "Well then?" he asked. "What do you say?"

"You know, Sebastian," Ciel said archly, "I've discovered I really don't think much of your friends."

"Grell, is, not…" Sebastian said, with a pained look.

"Oh, even the little earl knows it," Grell said, leaning close to Sebastian to swing an arm about his shoulders. "We were just _meant_ to be!"

Sebastian was gritting his teeth, very obviously trying to restrain himself from throwing the reaper bodily aside. Ciel smirked. "All right, then, Grell," he said at last. "How is this supposed to work?"

"All you have to do is fall asleep," Grell said. He paused. "Well?" he asked. "What are you waiting for?"

"I can't just 'go to sleep'," Ciel retorted, annoyed. "It doesn't happen like that—"

"If I may," Sebastian said, "I should be able to relax the young master into a state conducive to dreaming—with your permission?" he said, turning to Ciel.

Ciel stared hard at Sebastian before at last nodding curtly. He wasn't sure what Sebastian had in mind but he had given his butler permission to use any means at his disposal to get rid of Alois, and he tired of waiting.

Sebastian walked over to the bedside and leaned over. "This is nothing intrusive, my young lord," he said, in a low voice meant for Ciel's ears. "Merely a small mesmerism. I know you are quite immune to these, should you wish, but allow yourself to be persuaded."

"Very well," Ciel returned, though his words were short and he could not rid himself of the sudden tension in his frame. He let Sebastian divest him of his eyepatch, turning the world two-toned, and he took a slow breath. Ciel was still aware of the reaper in the room, already an untrustworthy individual even if he was _not_ going to let him into his dreams; but Sebastian, standing before him, looked calmly back, the deep cherry glow of his eyes inviting him to sleep. Ciel struggled with his natural reaction against the call; trying to tell his mind to let go, to be persuaded. Sebastian put one gloved hand up to his contracted eye, leisurely. "Sleep, my young master," he said softly. "You are tired, aren't you?"

He brushed one finger across the bottom of the lid, sparking softness throughout Ciel's body, and Ciel nodded. Yes; he was tired; he concentrated on that feeling, pushing away Grell standing, a bright flash of red, in the corner of his vision, casting out his anxious thoughts. He was determined to do this.

"Very good," Sebastian said, quietly. "Now, cast your mind down; remember what it feels like to dream. You remember it, yes?"

Ciel nodded, slowly; the world felt farther away, blanketed in tired quiet, and sleep beckoned. Sebastian held him as his body went limp, lowering him onto the covers, and Ciel closed his eyes. _It will be fine_ , he thought. _Sebastian would not let Grell hurt me, anyway—not if he could help it. And it will all be worth it if this rids me of Claude's curse_ …

/

 _How funny_ , Grell thought, staring with one lip twisted critically at the scene. _Head over heels, and neither one will admit it._ The reaper sighed; that was always the luck with men, wasn't it? The handsome ones were always unavailable. But Grell could never resist an impossible chase. Somehow, that made it all the more thrilling…

"Grell."

 _Oh, what was that?_ Grell blinked, finding Sebastian standing much closer than he had been before.

"The young lord is asleep," Sebastian said, testily. "Now, it is time for your part."

"There's no need to be so impatient," Grell retorted. Really now. _I was about to get on it… you can't fault a girl for a little fantasy…_

Sebastian sighed in palpable annoyance, and Grell smirked. On the other hand, it was always a treat to see Sebby so worked up. With a flourish, the grim reaper walked over to the earl's bedside and peered down at him. It all looked fine from here, but what would be found inside that head? Grell picked up the edge of the trailing red coat, and settled onto the edge of the bed, glancing over at Sebastian's almost inaudible noise of protest.

"Don't worry, Bassy darling," Grell said, sweetly, staring up at him. "I'm just getting comfortable."

"Just as long as you don't get _too_ comfortable," Sebastian muttered.

Grell laughed. He really was a dear. The demon pretended to abhor the reaper, but if anyone knew interest, it was Grell Sutcliff. And even if it was only to show off, Sebastian returned the banter much too much to keep up his fiction of indifference.

But it really was time to get to business. Grell took a deep breath, putting one hand to either side of Ciel's forehead, and leaned in, letting the natural openness of the dreaming allow a space into Ciel's cinematic record. After a moment or two, the sounds of the room seemed to drift away, and that familiar reel spinning by grew louder, still attached to the body, still adding new frames in each living moment. But all at once, the strangeness became quite clear. For instead of one record, spinning round and round, wound within the human's breast, there were two, side by side and moving almost in concert, each attached to a bright glow. The proper one was entirely evident, as it fit quite naturally into its body; the other one was almost shoved in; it made the both of them exceedingly cramped. Grell tutted in sympathy, and looked closer. The other soul showed definite signs of mishandling; there was a section that had quite clearly been pulled; it still didn't lay quite flat on the reel. This was where it had started to unspool, at its body's natural death, before its unfurling had been halted. Kept within the enchanted stone, and unable to properly die, it had been stuck existing in a tortured state until it had been placed here, grafted into the body. As Grell had suspected, it was the reels that fouled it up—the memories, not the soul itself. Here and there, bits of film from one spool stuck to bits of film at the other; these points were clumped at the back, where the most formative memories were. Each boy's mistreatment stood out, a blaring frame repeated beyond its natural life, popping up throughout the rest of the reel in dreams and intense memories, and so the rippled effect of those small changes was quite strong. And then, some of the newer parts of the reels almost seemed to melt into each other, shared memories repeated image for image in each; each positive match tying the two more tightly together.

How very vile, Grell thought. The longer the curse remaned, the more the two souls' memories would become entangled, until it might not be possible to take them apart at all without severely damaging both.

But it hadn't gotten that far yet. And as a death god, Grell felt a natural inclination to fix this horrible mess; even if Sebastian hadn't asked as a personal favor. It was just awful.

Those memories at the very back, those memories that had been brought together through dark magic: Alois Trancy, then Jim Markam, pulling his way from the ranks of the dirty slave-boys by his fingernails, using the old man's lust against him. Just be what he wants you to be, it's not so hard. Not when you'll get everything out of it: money, a new name and a title, all the power you ever dreamed of.

Ciel Phantomhive, pulling his way out of the ranks of dead bodies, the dirty cages, the partygoers who looked at him with groping eyes. Taking the hand of the devil. It's not so hard. Not when you'll get everything out of it: revenge, and all the power you ever dreamed of.

Young Jim, dancing with the flames of the village around him. Just what he had wished for.

Just what he had wished for, young Ciel, in his moment of despair—someone to strike them all down.

But Luca was dead. His brother, his only brother, the only one who had loved him unconditionally. Dead, with staring, marble eyes.

And Sebastian Michaelis had done it!

Sebastian Michaelis made that deal!

/

"It's over now, you know," a soft voice said, amid the screaming and the pain. Ciel opened his eyes, and in the midst of those bodies, the knife raised up, flickering down to strike his own flesh, and disappearing, was a figure sitting casually upon the altar, one leg crossed over the other, red-booted, red-jacketed.

Ciel looked around, realizing that, as the reaper was sitting upon the alter, Ciel must not have been after all. The bodies were only skeletons, mouldering on the floor. He took a deep breath, and looked up at the red-haired man, who smiled, almost kindly, with pointed teeth.

"I remember you," Ciel said at last. "I've dreamed you before, haven't I? You were the Cheshire Cat."

"You remember!" Grell said, hopping lightly off of the altar. "Yes; I was the one sent to guide you to the afterlife—I think they figured no one else could manage it—but you fought me quite a bit on the way."

"Yes," Ciel said, slowly. "I think I do…"

"Right now, you have another problem. It's Alois Trancy; his memories have been brought together with your own."

Ciel nodded. "It's _these_ memories, of course," he said.

"Yes… but look," Grell turned around, and the whole scene seemed to slide sideways as he did so, until the whole empty, horrible room where the cult had been was cut across to stand side by side with Trancy manor. "What do you see?"

Ciel walked closer, reaching out. He was no longer within either scene, but somehow outside it, in the emptiness between, and the images seemed oddly flattened, not real at all; more like old memories should feel, with a barrier between him and it. "They're different," he said, at last, his eyes flicking from one to the other as the scenes scrolled through. Now that he saw it, it was hard to think how they could have been so entangled; they were so different. And it was easy, from out here, to recognize himself in the one, and Alois in the other.

He couldn't help staring at that child, crying as he was taken, tormented. Were those tears really his? Had he ever really been that small, that young? For the first time, Ciel saw the memories without living them again, and though his breath caught, and the tears in his eyes started to fall, he was crying clean tears, for a boy and his lost innocence, for what had once been himself.

The reaper stepped forward, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. "There, there," he said. Ciel turned his head as the memories ended, looking at the familiar red of that coat that his aunt had once worn, and he was too tired to stand. He slumped to his knees, still crying, and let the reaper crouch down beside him and carefully put an arm around his shoulders.

"Is that all?" Ciel said, at last. "Has it been fixed?"

He felt wrung out; tired even though he knew he must be dreaming.

The reaper looked out into emptiness, green eyes squinting behind his red glasses. "Almost," he said. "There's only one piece left, but it's a tricky one."

Ciel looked out as well, trying to make out whatever it was that Grell saw. For a long time, he saw nothing but darkness. But then, slowly, from the shadows, he made out the faint, almost transparent outline of an image scrolling past, slowly drifting toward them, becoming clearer and more distinct.

"Luca!" Ciel said. He tried to stand up, to rush forward into that image and hold him one more time, but the reaper stopped him with a firm grip.

"Look," he said. "Really look. You know that's not your brother."

"Yes it is," Ciel said. Part of him believed the reaper's words, but the wrenching pain inside his chest denied it. It was one thing to reinterpret his own memories, but to erase someone from existence… he felt so real.

"Luca was in the village. You never met him. See? That's Jim Markam he's with, not you."

Ciel looked.

"Isn't it?"

"Yes…" Ciel said at last. "But… he was my brother. He died. And it was Sebastian's fault."

Grell sighed. "Really?" he said. "You know better than that. Look again."

"No," Ciel said. "No, he's my brother… I loved him…"

"Alois loved him."

"No!"

Grell watched him; his face was unreadable, blank and flat in the light from the screen. "Why are you so afraid of this, Ciel?" he said.

"He is my brother," Ciel said, stubbornly. "And I loved him."

"When all the village was against you, Luca was always there?" Grell said. "But you were never in the village, Ciel. You were taken from the burning house. You were always alone in that cage."

"No!" Ciel screamed. "I wasn't… I wasn't…"

The dream-space shattered.

/

Ciel shot up in his bed, his eyes wild, still screaming. He scrambled to his knees, eyes darting from Grell to Sebastian, and darted a hand to the gun still sitting beside him. He held it out before him, hands shaking. "Take it back," he shouted, training it on Grell. "Take it back."

Sebastian stepped forward. "Young master," he started. Ciel turned his way, pointing the gun toward the butler as he did so. "Stay where you are," he said.

Then he turned back to Grell. "I wasn't alone," he said, his voice thick and shaking. "I wasn't. My brother was there with me."

"Brother?" Sebastian said, looking at Grell in confusion.

"Alois' brother," Grell said, glancing at him quickly, before turning back to Ciel, and speaking with a calm, pacifying tone.

"Luca was Alois' brother, Ciel. He was in the village. You weren't."

"Not Luca—" Ciel said. " _My_ brother. My brother, he, he was there, he promised me he wouldn't leave."

"Then where did he go?" Grell asked.

"He died!" Ciel's voice wavered, and he dropped the gun, curling up onto his bed and wrapping his arms about himself. "He died, or he never would have left me."

"What was his name?" Grell said.

"I…" Ciel said. He looked up, meeting Grell's eyes with a tear-streaked face. "What do you mean? What kind of a question are you asking?" His voice was sharp and suspicious.

"It's a simple question," Grell said. "What was your brother's name?"

"...Ciel," Ciel said, uncertainly.

"That's _your_ name," Grell said, but Ciel shook his head, pressing himself back against the headboard.

"No," he said. "That boy, on the altar. That wasn't me. Ciel. It wasn't me. It was my brother. He died. I… I took his place, I stole his name."

"Alois Trancy stole the name of Trancy's son," Grell said. "Trancy's dead son, whom he looked so much like. You are not Alois, Ciel."

"Not Ciel," Ciel said. "I am not him."

"That what do you believe your name is?" Sebastian said, curiously.

Ciel opened his mouth, as if to speak, as if waiting for something to appear. "I don't know," he whispered, at last. "I don't know. I must be nothing."

.

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	22. Chapter 22

"Explain yourself," Sebastian hissed, furiously, turning to Grell, who looked entirely too unconcerned with this turn of events. "You said you could fix the entwined memories between Ciel and Alois."

"And I did!" Grell said, pulling out of Sebastian's grip and giving him a wounded expression that only made Sebastian even angrier. He let his eyes flash and a little bit of darkness creep around them, and Grell edged away with a nervous laugh. "Listen—Sebastian—I said it would be iffy, didn't I? Dealing with traumas of this kind is touch and go, but most of it's fixed!" He stopped, crossing his arms with wounded dignity and facing Sebastian again, his mouth pressed into a thin-lipped scowl. "And I did it without any payment, either, so don't go complaining that you didn't get everything the way you wanted!"

"Fixed?" Sebastian asked, dangerously. He wondered if Grell was truly that oblivious, or if he thought he could still somehow spin this to his advantage and placate the demon. If it wasn't for the concern Sebastian had for the continuing state of the boy on the bed, he would have already taken Grell and done his very best to wipe the floor with his bloodied spectral remains. "If you didn't notice," he growled, "the young master now believes that he has no name, and a brother that doesn't exist. I fail to see how this is an improvement!"

"It's just a backlash," Grell explained, with a long-suffering sigh. "For so long, Ciel experienced his memories of torture as belonging to his present self, and wasn't able to conceptualize them in any other way. Now he can." Sebastian stared at him, nonplussed. Grell continued, with some annoyance. "This is a step forward."

Sebastian turned aside, looking at Ciel who was still curled on the bed and crying quietly. He found it hard to connect this broken, weeping mess of emotions with the proud and cold boy he had contracted with. "This is a step forward," he echoed. From where Sebastian was standing, it did not seem like a step forward at all. True, Ciel had given him leave to do whatever was necessary in their search to restore his soul, but he did not think that, in his right mind, the young master would agree that this situation was in any way preferable. Sebastian couldn't help the frown that moved its way onto his features as he approached the bed, warily, waiting for Ciel to make some unexpected move. But the boy did not heed him at all, even as Sebastian hovered awkwardly beside him. Grell trailed after him, and when Sebastian looked away, troubled, Grell caught his eye with a sudden sympathetic look.

"But those memories, that you have so _graciously_ helped Ciel move past," Sebastian said, struggling to contain the uncertain flood of anger and helplessness at his inability to do anything for his master, "have formed the core of new self since that time three years ago. They were the reason for his revenge, and the determination he built himself back up around."

"He got his revenge, didn't he?" Grell asked.

Sebastian looked, quickly, in Grell's direction, wishing suddenly that he had not been so indebted to the reaper for his expertise. Grell was beginning to know quite too much about the both of them. "Yes," he said at last, reluctantly.

"He couldn't have lived that way forever, then," Grell said. "The revenge is over. He would have needed to find another self eventually."

 _That was why he was supposed to die,_ Sebastian thought. _At the moment of the highest rapture, we were meant to consummate the poetry of his story. But he has outlived it_.

He didn't know what to do now. Give him any enemy to fight, and he would slay them, give him any kingdom to conquer, and he would build his king a palace among the ashes of his enemies. Any impossibility, be it his master's wish, he would grant. But he had never experienced an after. It was to eat the soul and then move on, that was the way of the world. _This must be why such attachments are reviled_ , Sebastian thought, for the first time seeing what Claude must have seen in Sebastian's care—a weakness, in what had been impenetrable strength. A lack of purpose, anathema to the demon's aesthetic. For the first time, since glimpsing that brilliant, impossible soul amongst the wreckage, Sebastian saw Ciel with true disgust, as only another base example of humanity, an ordinary being among a sea of others, that had sunk its anchor into him and pulled him down.

For an endless moment, he hovered on the precipice, thinking of breaking the contract as he had not considered since the very earliest days of their arrangement, before he had sworn his allegiance to the boy.

It would be the best thing to do. Leave this ruin before the whole situation embarrassed him further; forget about it, give up his claim to the soul and move on.

He considered it, and yet the anguish he felt even in the consideration surprised him; there was a betrayal in his realization of Ciel's imperfection that pierced him like a mortal wound.

Slowly, Sebastian realised that Ciel had looked up to meet his eyes, his face, tear-stained, but composed, was watching him.

"I wouldn't blame you for it," Ciel said.

"The presence or absence of your blame does not influence my decision," Sebastian said.

Ciel flinched, and looked down. "Of course."

"Your soul continues to disappoint," Sebastian added.

Ciel did not even answer, only pulled his legs closer to his body. The hitch in his breathing would have been almost imperceptible to any other human, but Sebastian's senses honed into the sign of distress. The usual excitement he felt at the sound of such beautiful distraughtness was still present, but he ignored it coldly.

"Well?" Ciel said at last, shakily. "Do it, then, if you are going to. Break the contract!"

And yet, Sebastian found himself pinned beneath those eyes, that force of determination, even in the face of irrevocable loss. _How can anyone continue to live, after such a thing?_ he wondered. All the boy's outward protestations aside, he had created himself to be nothing more than that which would please Sebastian most, and now, for the first time, he had lost that approval.

And he continued. Despite it all.

Despite Sebastian's flirtation with the aesthetics of it, he had never really considered the nature of hunger. It was merely a fact of existence; sometimes anticipatory, many times banal; and if there was an art to be made, it was in the presentation only. Every time satiation was achieved, it would be lost to the slow and corrupting act of digestion. To humans, who were even more dependent on food for their meagre existence, it was yet less of a question. And yet _hunger_ seemed such a reductive way to explain _it_. That vortex, that convergence of the eternity of boredom, that possibility for something other than the mere shadow of existence that demons were consigned to; forever a taste of what could not be grasped or consumed.

'There will be other souls' gave a ready answer to hunger, but not to _it_.

"...I will not."

The anger in Ciel's eyes was burning, now. He stood up, slipping down from the bed in his nightgown to grab the front of Sebastian's shirt. "I will not be a disappointment, Sebastian," he said, with a hard and unforgiving edge to his voice. "If you see nothing else to gain in this contract, I won't have you here anymore. I'll break it myself."

"Young master—" Sebastian began. Ciel's eyes narrowed.

His words seemed to necessitate an answer. "I do see something to gain," Sebastian said.

"What?"

"...I don't know."

Ciel stepped back. "You can't be serious," he said. "You find my soul a disappointment, and yet you want to continue this contract between us because of a reason you _don't know?_ "

"In essence," Sebastian said. "I understand that this is an unsatisfactory answer."

"Yes," Ciel snapped. "It is." He sighed, and looked over at the other side of the room. "Grell—get out of here, or I'll set Sebastian on you. I don't care if he's become fond of you or not, I'll have him rip your lungs out."

Grell grinned. "Oh, don't mind me!" he said, edging his way out the door. "I'm sure you'll work it all out eventually!" he called, giving a wave goodbye before he pulled it closed behind him, bounding through the manor at inhuman speeds and away into the air.

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	23. Chapter 23

Sebastian dressed him in awkward silence; the usually familiar routine only seeming to make an unfamiliar itch brew under Ciel's skin. Ciel waved Sebastian's help off for the last buttons he could do himself, resentful.

There was a pounding headache behind Ciel's eyes, as if Finnian were enthusiastically throwing boulders up against his skull. It did not help his mood, and neither did his dog's aberrant behaviour. First, to almost break the contract, and then to continue it, for some ill-defined reason that apparently had nothing to do with Ciel's soul, and that Sebastian himself didn't even understand… it made Ciel even more short-tempered than usual.

Ciel chose something light for breakfast. He felt too anxious to eat much; there was a tight coiled knot in his stomach. All he wanted was to be left alone, away from the front he must continually put up in front of others; less in front of Sebastian, but still there… the knowledge that he must justify everything to Sebastian's impeccable standard.

 _But then,_ Ciel thought, with sudden viciousness, _he already finds me a disappointment. Why do I even bother?_ It made him want to act pettily, to anonymously give money to charity or comfort grieving strangers. He laughed slightly at the irony, waving away Sebastian's look of curiosity. He waited until Sebastian had left the room before he finally left the bedroom and walked slowly down the hall, lost in thought. _It isn't real_ , Ciel thought. _Those memories… of him._ Both Grell and Sebastian had insisted upon it. But… had Sebastian? Ciel couldn't remember if he had refuted the fact… refuted Ciel's lie. The anger that was brewing in the air was as much at Ciel himself as Sebastian; he disliked being helpless; he disliked the idea of being so uncertain of the validity of his own thoughts and memories.

 _It has to be true_ , he thought, a moment later; his determination swinging the other way. It seemed incredible to believe he had dreamed Ciel up. His own brother. Every moment, a new memory floated forward, blurred itself into consciousness; he could remember everything… he could remember _him_ , so clearly!

And yet…

The past few days had held little time for any of Ciel's normal routine, besides the tedium of paperwork; well, most of that was done, now, and today he would continue what lessons he could without bringing in one of his tutors. There was still some hope, was there not, that this could all be passed off as a temporary illness. If it lasted much longer, then he would have to figure out what story he needed to create, to limit Alois' power while leaving Ciel something more than the life of a recluse or a madman. What that incredible story would be, Ciel chose to put aside until it came to that.

Music lessons were pure torture. It was hard enough to concentrate on the complicated pieces Sebastian expected him to play, not only without mistake, but with feeling, without the irritation of the noise in his head and the lingering tiredness that still had not left him. But Ciel bent his mind to concentrating; it was a relief, after all. Filling his days with work and activity made it harder to fall into bleak despair; he had known this for years. Drawing was another kind of torment. Precision was still required, but he began to consider other things, again. Those memories. He thought back to what Grell had shown him with dread, waiting for the familiar nausea, but he found, to his increasing surprise, that his heart-rate did not rise at all, nor did his hands sweat as he sketched out the carefully arranged still-life before him, each proportion, each angle and shadow of the scene. _He showed me that day,_ Ciel remembered, _and before it… that whole month… everything that happened._ It was still terrible, and yet he felt somehow freed of its hold on him. Ciel didn't know what to think about that. It seemed wrong, somehow, to suddenly regard that time as just another part of his past. And yet, why should it be otherwise? Yes, he had taken the anger, the motivation from its looming shadow for so long that he was not sure what to do now that that was gone, but—it was already gone. It had ended long ago. And he had fulfilled everything he had set out to achieve in his life. If he was to die, now, for Sebastian, was it really so bad to be at peace when he did?

The rest of the day was spent hunting game on horseback. It passed the time very well, and when supper had ended and he slid into the bath Sebastian had prepared, he found that the continual tension and anxiety that had seemed to linger around him like a cloud had lifted, and he felt tired—a good, clean kind of tired after a long day, and his mind had cleared enough for him to consider his situation once again, to think about what might be done now, instead of only waiting and shaking in fear. As Sebastian ran his gloved hands through Ciel's soaped hair, Ciel stared at the bubbles of water that swirled about his knees and the dirt that swirled into the bottom of the tub. That little trick of Sebastian's with the New Moon Drop tea had been clever, he thought. Alois obviously hadn't suspected anything; by the time he might have he was already confused, under the drug's influence. It was odd to remember that, and everything else that had happened when Alois was in control of his body; he felt just as present in the world as ever, but stuck under his own skin, unable to influence anything that body said or did. Alois' fear couldn't help but influence him, the uncontrollable reactions of the body's response still worked on him, but while Alois was lost and beyond any ability to know what would happen or control it, Ciel had known that Sebastian had planned everything according to their aims, and no matter how much terror he might feel, Sebastian would be beside him all the way. He had promised, after all. And Ciel knew that whatever Sebastian's motivations might be, he would keep his deals.

 _I know this about Sebastian,_ Ciel realized. _Whatever else might remain obscure. But it is no universal demonic trait. Claude is enough to show me otherwise_.

It was an odd thought; and Ciel turned it over in his mind as he dried himself in clean, fresh towels and let Sebastian slide a nightgown over his head, still-damp hair falling in long bangs over his uncovered right eye. _So Sebastian does exist, then,_ Ciel thought; _in some way._ It was a thought he had never spent long allowing himself to consider, believing he could never know the truth of it: how much of that butler that played at being his was real, and how much only a façade? Who was that being that he had made a deal with, after all?

But perhaps it was less complicated than he had thought. Sebastian was someone who would do all that be had done, who would act as he had acted, in their deal. And who still felt, somehow, that there was something to be gained from it, though he didn't know what.

Sebastian carried the light behind him as they walked into his room, and as he set it down to pull the sheets open, Ciel said, "I don't think I shall be sleeping quite yet. I want to play a game first."

"As you wish," Sebastian answered, turning back. The left-hand dresser of the bed was always filled with various games, some that he was testing for his company, some that he was creating, others that he merely liked to play. Ciel reached to pull out a dart-board and balanced it at the top of the table, handing Sebastian a few of the darts, and they began to play in silence, while the candles burned brightly on, flickering a little in the wind as they passed.

"Whatever Grell might have messed up with... my brother," Ciel said at last, "he did actually succeed at something. I'm no longer confusing Alois' memories with my own."

"Really?" Sebastian asked. "Are you quite sure about that?" He sent a dart unerringly into the center of the board. A perfect score, as always. Ciel huffed.

"Yes, I'm sure," he said.

"You don't mind if I press you for proof," Sebastian said. "What happened the day the village burnt down?"

"The house," Ciel said grimly. "I was never in the village. Try something harder."

"Describe the room you were kept captive."

Ciel swallowed, but continued resolutely.

"Very good," Sebastian said. "And when you saw me for the first time, what did I look like?"

"...darkness," Ciel said at last. "And then you killed them. You killed them all."

Sebastian smiled.

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	24. Chapter 24

"Undertaker," Grell said, with a voice lowered more than it might be otherwise, given that they were in a library, and the high, empty ceilings and the cold, open space seemed to frown upon all enthusiasm. Perhaps, also, because Grell was considering something that was more than slightly out of the ordinary. It had been more of a disappointment than the reaper let on, to realize that the careful untangling Grell had done on the Phantomhive boy's soul had failed. Not only was it a blow to the reaper's pride, but it seemed a terrible state to leave any being in—just unconscionable. So, perhaps this chance meeting was less of a chance than Grell would admit; but Undertaker didn't seem to notice anything suspicious in Grell's presence in a library that in many years of reaperhood that one had never bothered to visit. Instead, he greeted Grell cheerfully, with a beaming smile, his silvery hair swinging as he turned. "Looking for a good read, eh?" he said.

"Actually, I was thinking of taking a look at the Phantomhive boy's book," Grell said nonchalantly.

"The Phantomhive boy?" Undertaker said, with a sudden sharpness. Grell felt almost as if the old reaper's piercing green eyes were fixed forward, seeing straight through that lousy excuse. He couldn't see much of anything, of course, since he didn't have reaper's glasses, but that didn't change the shiver at his uncanny attention. Well, Grell had never been good at subtlety. Abandoning any idea of doing this by stealth, Grell explained what had happened, watching as Undertaker grew more still and silent with each word.

"...Is that right," Undertaker murmured, quietly, at last.

"And I remembered that you had that odd pink bookmark," Grell said. "Maybe what can't be done from within could be done in the source code?"

"Perhaps, perhaps," Undertaker said, leading the way through the library's endless halls. He climbed up one of the sliding ladders and skipped his long black fingernails over the titles. "I must warn you though, my dear, that the bookmark's power isn't absolute. It can only change the future, not create the impossible."

"What do you mean?" Grell said in exasperation. "Isn't that the same thing?"

Undertaker chuckled. "Not at all. It can't bring to life those that have already died, and it can't make anything happen that could not theoretically have occurred in some other way. If I was to write that the moon suddenly turned into green cheese in someone's book, it wouldn't make a lick of difference. If I wrote that that person suddenly _believed_ that the moon was made of green cheese, well—that would be quite a different story." He laughed out loud, almost falling off the ladder as he slid down it, book in hand. "Wouldn't that be a sight!" he said.

"I suppose," Grell said. Personally, the red-clad reaper didn't see the appeal in messing with people's cinematic records.

"Hm," Undertaker said, opening Ciel Phantomhive's record book and flipping to the most recent page. "Maybe this will work… let's see. 'Someone who is both willing and able to fix the tangled memories in Ciel Phantomhive's soul goes to him to free him from his connection with Alois Trancy.' That should do it."

They peered down at the page.

"Should something be happening?" Grell said at last.

Undertaker sighed and slid the bookmark back into one of his voluminous sleeves. "As I said, if it's not possible, nothing will happen." He started back up the ladder to replace Phantomhive's book in its shelf.

"That's all, then?" Grell said.

"Should there be something else?" Undertaker asked.

"Well, we can't leave him like that!"

Undertaker shrugged. "It's none of my business," he said, climbing down again. "—You said the young earl was quite unpalatable to demons right now, didn't you?" he asked.

"Yes, but that's no surprise," Grell said, not sure where Undertaker was going with this, "the defilement of his soul is grotesque! Death would be preferable to such a travesty."

"Maybe," Undertaker said, "Maybe. But perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. If his demon doesn't claim his soul upon his death, it will be free."

Grell frowned. "I suppose so. Free from _them_ , but it would still be linked to the other soul—where would it even go? What would it do to our records?"

"Who knows?" Undertaker asked. "But I'm sure it would be very interesting. Ciel Phantomhive has a chance now; who knows what he'll do with it?"

"Nothing," Grell said, irritated. "We can't leave him like that. If nothing else can be done, he'll have to be killed."

"No," Undertaker said. "I think not."

"What?"

But Undertaker just smiled, inscrutably, at Grell and turned away.

"Do you think there's something funny about letting the soul live on as an abomination of nature?" Grell cried, rushing after him as Undertaker started to wander off.

"As I recall, you've gotten yourself into quite a bit of trouble for killing people who weren't on the to-die list," Undertaker said pointedly. "What's letting one live, more or less?"

"It's—" Grell sputtered. "It's the very basic foundation of the reaper ethics—don't you laugh at me, old man—everyone's going to die. So I killed some early! Maybe it's a little bit of trouble, but I never played around with monstrosities. Come back here!" But Undertaker had gotten to the library's doors and vanished into a dazzling, sunlit courtyard. When Grell blinked and looked again, he was gone.

Grell stood in the shadow of the great doors and clenched black-gloved fists. Everything felt too pristine, too white. The longing for the dark, for alleys made by fumbling mortal hands, seemed to sweep over the trembling reaper, who looked down at the red coat below, and saw through the mist of memory a red-haired lady who had burned with passion like a flame, pulling Grell along into her circling fall. In Grell's right mind, of course, killing those not on the to-die list should have been unthinkable, but love was madness, a sweeping, giddying power that was out of anyone's control. And then it had ended.

 _Everyone is going to die,_ Grell reminded, again. _What does it matter if I killed one early?_

And the scarlet coat flapped in the sudden breeze.

* * *

 _...{end of part four}..._

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	25. Part 5: Unweaving

—thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,  
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,  
And for thy maintenance commits his body  
To painful labour both by sea and land,  
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,  
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;  
And craves no other tribute at thy hands  
But love, fair looks and true obedience;  
Too little payment for so great a debt.

— _The Taming of the Shrew_

* * *

 **Part five:** _Unweaving_

* * *

A cold wind had picked up, touched with the barest hint of autumn. And Sebastian, having left his master's chambers, carried the three-pronged candelabra through the darkened house, fastening the shutters and bolting the doors. But down the echoed staircase, over the chessboard floor, a knock came.

"Now, who would be visiting at such a time, I wonder?" Sebastian murmured to himself. He stepped carefully to the door and peered out into the gloom. "Undertaker?" he asked, in surprise. "What brings you here?"

"Something I heard," Undertaker said mysteriously. "Is the earl still up?"

"He went to bed almost half an hour ago," Sebastian said, _and I'm not going to wake Alois Trancy,_ he thought. "You just missed him."

"Really? Pity," Undertaker muttered. "You don't mind if I come in?" he added, flashing a disturbingly wide grin at the stiffly standing butler. Sebastian watched him edge his way through the door—technically, the Undertaker was an invited guest at the manor, having been advisor to the family for generations, and so Sebastian had no reason to keep him out, as much as he might want to.

Sebastian sighed. "Couldn't this wait until morning?" he asked, at last, with a glance toward the still-open doorway.

"Oh, I'm sure it could," Undertaker said, "but I was out wandering the graveyards and thought I'd drop by."

"If you're hoping to speak to the earl, he most likely will not be available tomorrow," Sebastian said. "If you wish, we can come visit you at your convenience," he added.

"Oh that's fine," Undertaker added, "I'll just sneak in a moment."

 _He's as bad as Lau,_ Sebastian thought, with increasing exasperation. He'd thought the solitary being was more the type to watch and wait, but something had obviously impelled the reaper to visit. "You haven't heard from Grell recently?" he asked, on a sudden suspicion.

"Now why would you ask that?" Undertaker asked, turning to him. He smiled. "As a matter of fact, I have. I was visited by that reaper just today."

"Is that right," Sebastian said. He'd been a fool to trust the reaper's discretion in this matter. On the contrary, he ought to have had a very stern conversation with him before he left, but the master had managed to drive him off with amazing alacrity.

"It's quite an interesting pickle young Phantomhive has managed to get himself into," Undertaker said. "I understand there are still a few pieces Grell wasn't quite successful at clearing up?"

"Yes," Sebastian said flatly.

"Then perhaps I may be of assistance?"

Sebastian stared at the smiling figure for a moment, without moving. "I'm not sure that will be necessary," he said at last. "If that's all, may I show you the door—"

"Don't worry, I know where it is," Undertaker said, with a cackle, before sobering. "I am more experienced, you know… " he added. "I have been around for much longer than Grell Sutcliff. There's no reason to distrust my expertise."

"It's not your expertise that I distrust," Sebastian said.

"What are you two talking about?"

Sebastian turned to see a small, white-clad form at the head of the stairs. "Young master?" he asked. "How—"

"I couldn't fall asleep," Ciel said. He walked carefully down the steps, while the two beings watched him. "Why is he here?" he asked, as he drew level with them, his bare feet almost soundless on the cold floor.

"I heard about your trouble," Undertaker said, "And I was just offering my assistance before you came down."

"Why?" Ciel asked bluntly.

"Why? Now Earl, if you could see yourself you wouldn't have to ask," Undertaker said, reaching out a long, black-nailed hand to brush across Ciel's face. Ciel stared back, unmoved. "The kind of tangle that's been made of your and this other soul just can't be left alone in good conscience," he said. "I've never seen its like before. No wonder Grell was in such a state."

"Really," Ciel said dryly. "Does that sound likely, Sebastian?"

Sebastian hesitated. "Well… it's a perfectly adequate explanation," he said, at last. Ciel glanced sharply at him, narrowing his eyes in sudden comprehension of the fact that Sebastian was not in the least happy with the old reaper's offer.

"Allow us to consider your request," Ciel said. "I'm sure you can find your way to the billiards room."

"Oh, no worries, I know everything about this manor," Undertaker said with a smile. "It's the very image of what it was when your father was alive," he added. When he had walked off, Ciel started back up the stairs.

"You have doubts," he said, without looking at the demon following behind. "Speak."

"I don't trust the Undertaker," Sebastian said.

"Understandable. But what other option do we really have? Other than a reaper, we know of no one who could fix this mess. And Grell is just as untrustworthy, and he managed to help."

Sebastian sighed minutely. "Let me rephrase," he said. "Undertaker is a piece I can't predict. And he seems… too interested in this matter. Grell's infatuation with me explains his willingness to help, but…"

"Undertaker has loyalty to this family," Ciel said. "Or at least a continuing interest in it. He's never worked against us so far."

Everything Ciel said was correct, yet Sebastian still couldn't shake the feeling that had come over him the moment he heard those knocks at the door. He was quiet all the way to the billiards' room, and when they stepped inside, Ciel said loudly, "I agree to your request, Undertaker. We can go into one of the parlors if I need to lie down for anything. Does that seem agreeable?"

"Of course," Undertaker said. He trailed behind them, and as they entered one of the parlors, dark and quiet in the night, its windows draped with thick curtains, Ciel arranged a few pillows against one of the couches and sat very regally, as though he was king taking a petition and not a little boy in a nightgown. It made Sebastian smile, as he set down the candles.

"Do I need to fall asleep for this?" Ciel asked, with a glance at Sebastian.

"Oh no," Undertaker said. "I'd rather have a look first, if that's all the same to you."

Ciel nodded, stiffly.

"Don't worry," Undertaker crooned, "this won't hurt a bit."

"I didn't think it would—" Ciel said, with a little nervousness under his sarcasm, but he went quiet as Undertaker crept forward to sit on the couch beside him. Sebastian watched closely; the ancient reaper's long, twisting hair fell onto Ciel's arms as he reached gently for the child's face. Ciel flinched, slightly, and then closed his eyes. For a number of minutes, nothing happened. At last Undertaker reached back, face unreadable behind his long bangs, and then stood up. "I see," he said quietly.

"Yes? What is it?" Sebastian said, walking to stand protectively before his young master. Ciel yawned, and then shook himself, obviously fighting to keep awake, and then stood up as well.

"This is indeed a tricky bit," Undertaker said. "It might take some time, and—pardon my saying this, but a better space."

"We can go to a bedroom," Ciel said, evenly, though his face flushed a little in the darkness.

"Will you be able to stay there, hm, about two days?"

"Two _days_?" Ciel said, Sebastian echoing the question with equal incredulity. Undertaker turned to them and chuckled.

"It's not that long," he said.

"We can't say I've been taken ill _again_ ," Ciel said in an undertone. He sighed. "You can explain the situation to the servants, I suppose—discreetly—"

"I'll do it wherever you like, of course, but perhaps my own little house would be the best place for this," Undertaker said. "We won't get under anyone's feet there."

"Absolutely not," Sebastian said firmly.

"Sebastian—" Ciel said.

"No, my lord. It is entirely out of the question."

"Perhaps the townhouse instead," Ciel finished.

Sebastian stopped. "Of course," he said.

"We ought to leave right away," Ciel said. "If we don't take the carriage, we can travel quite fast." He walked out of the room, waiting for Sebastian to follow, and they made their way through the house, closing the door behind them when they got to Ciel's room, leaving Undertaker to wander about in the hall.

"Did you actually think I was going to let him take me to his coffin-shop?" Ciel asked, as Sebastian picked out a change of clothes and his thick travel cloak to protect against the wind.

"I may have been slightly hasty in my response," Sebastian said. Actually, it embarrassed him to think that that was, indeed, what he had assumed.

Ciel rolled his eyes as he flopped back onto the bed. "Really, you should know me better than that," he said. He was interrupted by a yawn, and he rubbed at his eyes tiredly. "I should probably stay awake until we get there, shouldn't I?" he asked.

"That might be wise," Sebastian said, walking over to the bedside and placing the clothes on the table.

"Damn it," Ciel muttered, sitting up. "And here I was thinking I might actually get a good night's sleep tonight."

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	26. Chapter 26

With Soma and Agni off on a trip related to their growing street curry-bun business (it gave Ciel an interesting sort of satisfaction that they had taken his job of caring for the townhouse, which had originally been nothing more than an excuse to get the prince out of his hair, as an opportunity to expand into an actual moneymaking enterprise), the townhouse was surprisingly quiet, empty and pristine. Despite wishes to the contrary, Ciel had rarely been to the townhouse at a time when someone or other wasn't inviting themselves in and causing trouble… when Sebastian opened the door and Ciel stared up at the shadowed, empty halls, he couldn't shake the feeling of expecting Madam Red's voice to pierce its way down the stairs, the image of her and Lau ransacking the place in search of tea coming to his mind with startling intensity. _That happened, didn't it,_ Ciel thought. Was this a real memory, or only an image of what Sebastian had told him? Either way, it seemed uncannily distinct and bright, and it made the silence of the empty walls, and the creak of the floorboards when he slid out of Sebastian's arms to take the stairs himself even more pronounced.

"There you are," Undertaker said, his shadow coalescing out of one of the open doorways. "I was beginning to think you might not be coming."

Ceil managed to hold in his startlement well enough, and only sighed irritably in response, before leading the way to the room he used while staying here. "All right," he said, as they all filed in, turning and staring coldly up at Undertaker. "Get on with it."

"You will need to be asleep for this part," Undertaker said, "so you may as well get comfortable."

"Step outside, then," Ciel said, "so I can get changed." He was annoyed, chafing at every minute delay, but if he was going to be sleeping for two days, it would be better if he wasn't doing so in his clothes. He sighed, heavily, as Sebastian went to pick out a new nightgown and threw himself to lay sprawled out over the covers.

"Bored already, my lord?" Sebastian asked, with a small smile as he walked over.

"Hmph. I merely don't wish to change my clothes again for the second time in twenty minutes."

Sebastian chuckled. "And you're not even the one doing the work."

"Of course not. That's your job," Ciel said, and just out of contrariness, was particularly passive as Sebastian undressed him, not lifting a hand to undo the ribbon on his collar or the buttons on his shirt-sleeve, as he might sometimes do. The small edge of Sebastian's smile got a little sharper.

"I'll need you to say something to the servants tomorrow," Ciel said at last. "If I'm still asleep by then, you may do so."

"If you're still asleep and unable to speak otherwise, I most certainly am not going to leave you."

"Oh, don't make me order you, Sebastian," Ciel said, annoyed.

Sebastian fell silent for a moment, with a suddenly solemn expression. "Young master," he said, "I can't help but think you are not giving the danger of this situation the gravity it deserves."

"On the contrary," Ciel said sharply. "I know the risk. But I have never let misgivings rule me into inaction. If there was a better alternative, I would take it. And the servants need to be warned, or they'll probably go storming off who knows where trying to rescue me."

"Of course," Sebastian said at last, and stepped back. Ciel blinked, realizing that they had finished the whole business and that they had no more reason to delay. He watched Sebastian go to the door and let Undertaker in.

Despite his words, it rattled him profoundly to have Sebastian voice such concerns. But he stood by what he said. If the alternative was to let this situation continue, to let Alois Trancy continue to make a puppet of his body every other day, he thought he might do anything, no matter the cost.

Sebastian had seemed to agree with him. He'd certainly never put Ciel's wellbeing over the end of their contract. If anything, he should be the one most impatient to finally gain his well-deserved meal. But instead, he seemed almost reluctant to do this last piece.

Ciel realized that if Undertaker succeeded, he would wake up two days later to die. He had been preparing for this moment for so long, it seemed almost incredible that it could be so close. He suddenly wished he had chosen to use this last conversation with Sebastian to ask other favors of him—to tell him to give Ciel's regards to Elizabeth, to arrange a funeral... But that wasn't Ciel's concern. After he was dead, Sebastian would have no further ties to his household, anyway. Perhaps he would think of it himself, or perhaps he would just disappear. Ciel's will was updated, his money would be dispersed, his revenge was completed. He took a slow, steadying breath, and watched the two beings regard each other. At last Sebastian walked back to him. His face was impassive, and he said merely, "Allow me to let you sleep."

"I'm not sure if will take that much doing, right now," Ciel said, with a yawn that he couldn't stifle. "I'm very tired."

"I know," Sebastian answered quietly, and put a gentle hand on his forehead as Ciel lay down.

In another moment, without even a hint that it was to happen, Ciel had drifted away.

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	27. Chapter 27

He appeared in a hot summer's day, the dust sticking to the soles of his feet and getting a fine layer over the worn-out clothes he wore. _Alois' memory,_ Ciel thought, looking around at the now-familiar village. This was how it had been before it burned. In another moment, he blinked, startled, as he watched two figures running by, pieces of bread clutched in dirty hands and the voices of angry boys fading behind them.

"We got good stuff today, didn't we?" the younger said, his wide brown eyes peeking out from underneath his dirty brown hair, and smiling at the taller one. But Alois—Jim Markam—only scowled. "Guess so," he said. "Not like those dirty buggers needed it anyway." He watched his younger brother as he started to tear into the thick, fresh bread, still slightly warm; Luca closed his eyes and sighed in bliss, crouching against the stone wall they'd hidden themselves behind. Even here, they were on their guard—at any moment they might be found, and have to run again. Neither put down their hard-won bread, or spoke until every piece had been shoved into their mouths as quickly as possible.

"When you're a king," Luca said, when they had finished, "We'll have fresh bread like this every day, right?"

"Sure we will," Jim answered, with a hard and faraway look in his eyes. "And more than that, besides. We'll have wine at every meal, and butter to put on the bread too, and meat every Sunday."

"Really?" Luca asked, scooching closer. "Talk about where we'll live, again," he said. The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Jim from the place he had been in his head, the brittle lines of anger and weariness that seemed to mask itself over his face. "We'll… we'll live in a castle, of course," he said.

"With a moat?"

"Yeah," Jim said. "And knights to keep out all the intruders… they'll have clubs and bows, and they'll be able shoot down anyone who comes from a mile away. It'll have a dungeon, to lock up anyone who gets inside, and they'll pour boiling oil over their heads until they scream," he said.

"I know," Luca said, "but what will it look like inside? Tell me about that part."

"It'll be red," Jim said. "Red and gold, and every part of it will glow. It'll be like those shop windows in town…"

"Lit up for Christmas," Luca said, "with the toy train and the dollhouse,"

"And we'll have an army of nutcracker men," Jim finished.

Luca giggled. "I wouldn't be afraid of that," he said, "I could just kick 'em over."

"They'd be big ones, real big," Jim corrected. "Then they'd be scary. The size of a house."

"Whoa," Luca breathed.

Alois turned to Ciel, who found he had been sitting beside them, that he had been leaning forward almost as enraptured by the tales Alois told. "What about you?" Alois asked.

 _It's just a memory,_ Ciel reminded himself, but Alois continued to stare at him. "Well?" he said at last. "Aren't you going to say anything? We're waiting."

"Are you talking to me?" Ciel asked.

"'Course we are. Who else would we be talking to?" Alois said disdainfully. "Come on," he added, with a nasty edge to his voice, "Tell me what your house would be like… if you were rich… if you had all the money in the world," he said.

"I don't know," Ciel said. Alois laughed scornfully.

"You don't know? Hah. Maybe I should tell you, then. I bet it would have loads of windows in the front… and a drive that curves around. It would have at least twelve bedrooms, and pictures on the walls of all your ancestors. Isn't that right?"

"No," Ciel said quietly.

"And I bet your bedroom would have a huge bed in it with blue drapes… I'm right, aren't I?" he continued.

"You'd better shut up, Alois," Ciel said.

"Why? I haven't said nothing yet. I haven't even mentioned the butler you'd probably have—the one who'd dress in black. I bet you'd keep him just for his looks. I bet you'd ask him to touch you at night, like a filthy pervert—" he stood up, and Ciel stood up as well, clenching his fists.

"Oh yeah?" he cried. "Like you do with Claude?"

"You shut your mouth," Alois said.

"Don't act like you're so innocent, I know what you did, I saw you—"

"Felt it too, didn't you?" Alois said. "Did you enjoy it?" he asked, with a sweet, sweet smile.

Ciel screamed, his fist flying out into Alois' face with a punch that sent him stumbling back. Alois spit out blood and grinned back, tackling Ciel to the ground. In a moment, Ciel found himself blinking into the cloudless sky as Alois crawled over him. "I hate you so much, Ciel, do you know that?" Alois said, quietly. "All I wanted was to have you… All I wanted was revenge for my brother's death… you can understand that, can't you? All I wanted was to rip your precious Sebastian limb from limb, to make him… hurt…" his icy blue eyes were filled with tears as Ciel shoved him away, kneeled up and faced him, panting.

"You're a fool, Alois," Ciel said. "He told you he didn't kill Luca."

"He was lying," Alois said.

"He can't lie!" Ciel said. "But Claude can… you never ordered him not to… I know, I remember it too…"

"You're a liar too, Phantomhive," Alois said. "You and your whole household… but just you wait," he said, standing up with a sickly grin. "I'll defeat you. I know how," he added, "And there's only one thing I need…"

"Now, boys, it doesn't do to be fighting," a voice called from along the empty street, and a figure in dark grey robes walked calmly up, holding a staff in his hand.

"Undertaker," Ciel said, suddenly remembering the purpose of this dream. "Where have you been?"

"Oh, here, there," Undertaker said, with a smile. "You see, I've been thinking about your little problem. That little, little problem…" he walked forward, and lost his smile, suddenly. "Of you selling your soul."

"What?" Ciel asked blankly.

"I've always warned you," Undertaker said, softly. "I always tried to help you out of those obligations you tangled yourself in, but you never wanted my help. I didn't mind that much, at first… at least you were alive… but you kept getting closer to your revenge. And now all that's stopping you from being eaten by your butler is a tiny little thread holding you to Alois Trancy."

"You know, Ciel," Alois said, as they drew unconsciously together, "I wouldn't trust him."

"Yeah," Ciel said. "I'm getting that."

"Why," Undertaker continued, "were you so ready to die?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" Ciel retorted, in annoyance. "I got my revenge, as you said… and I have enough pride to keep up the end of my deals."

"Deals!" Undertaker said. "Deals are the purview of demons and villains. Haven't you anything else to value?"

"Why should I?" Ciel said. "Everything else was taken from me. And I am a villain." His eyes flicked around as he spoke, trying to find something he could use to gain the upper hand. But the village was empty, the long main street, dusty and wide, baked under the noonday sun.

Undertaker brought his staff down on the ground, and the dust flew up and the ground rumbled away on every side. The houses began to twist and creak, cracks popping out into the silence.

"I don't want to hurt you," the reaper said. His robes billowed out black behind him, an eerie green glow rising from around him. "But I can't let another Phantomhive die…" he finished at last, so quietly Ciel could hardly hear him. The ground shook even faster, big chunks of plaster from the houses nearby falling down as the whole world seemed to shake itself apart. Alois screamed and grabbed onto Ciel as they both fell, suddenly, into darkness, beyond the space of the dream. All that held them from the black was a piece of ground that fell below them, twisting suddenly down from the glint of the sun that grew farther and farther away with every moment.

And then there was silence.

Alois sat up and looked around, and so did Ciel. All around them was nothing but darkness, and the cracked piece of ground beneath them had gained the cold and slippery surface of marble, set with a broken chessboard design.

There was a silver chain strung between their hands; and in the darkness, it glowed a shining green.

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	28. Chapter 28

"What d'you think he did to us?" Alois asked at last, in a voice that seemed to echo on into the darkness, and then stop short, muffled and consumed.

"I don't know," Ciel said. They sat, now, back to back, and Ciel stared vaguely off into the darkness. It had been like this for quite some time—two days? Ciel didn't know. He wondered if Sebastian had realized that something went wrong already, or if he had gone off as Ciel had asked to assure the servants that everything was fine. Ciel huffed the slightest laugh. _Fine_ —that was certainly an irony, now.

Alois fidgeted again—he couldn't keep still, something that annoyed Ciel a miniscule amount more every time he did it. In the emptiness, that was the only thing to focus on. The chain clinked softly between them as it slipped down to chime on the marble floor.

"I did a terrible thing to you, Ciel," Alois said at last, sounding almost sorry. "Everyone seems to love you—Sebastian, Claude," he said, with a hint of anguish. "Even that grey reaper cares if you live or die. I just wanted to punish you for living such a blessed life."

Ciel almost laughed. The depths of Alois' self-delusion never ceased to astound him. "Love?" he murmured. "How childish." Although Alois was a year older than him, he seemed so incredibly young and naîve; he wanted a fairytale, an ending where he got everything handed to him, where someone fought their way through every obstacle just to be at his side. It was a perfectly ordinary wish, for a child. Hoping to recapture something that required no reciprocation; no negotiation. Prince Soma, even at age seventeen, had wished for the same. Elizabeth still searched—but at least she realized that love required sacrifice, required work. She would certainly grow into a formidable woman. Her only misstep was in planning for a future, not knowing that Ciel had given his away.

Had Ciel ever wished for such a thing? He tried to remember. In the cool darkness, there was nothing else to see, nothing else to hear but the breath that eased from his lips and the subtle pounding of his heart inside his chest, counting down the seconds.

He thought he must have. He felt sure that that boy he once had been had believed all those things; he still remembered when he had stopped. When he had realized that there were some things that couldn't be fixed, that day-dreaming couldn't wish away. That what was lost could never be recovered. If that had been the extent of his realization, he might be nothing more than a scattered hollow, now, if he had survived at all. If Sebastian had never appeared. If Sebastian had never answered his call. But he had answered, and Ciel had realized something else: that he still existed. That no matter what anyone could take from him, they could not take his very self. _That_ —of all things, that could only be given. And he had given it.

"You don't understand Sebastian at all," Ciel said. Everything in this world—from the social niceties to the alliances of criminals to the allegiance of patriots, was based off of trade; what could be given, one to another. Off of deals. It was merely that the greater part of humanity liked to fool itself in believing their might be something more to the meagre play of their lives beyond an array of transactions.

/

The second hand on Sebastian's pocket-watch moved forward. Once. Twice. Still, the sun had not even risen on the second day. He had gone as quickly as he could the first morning to inform the servants that the master and himself would be at the townhouse for a few days, and had raced back, to find Ciel still sleeping, apparently peacefully, Undertaker still crouching by his bed. He stood near the doorway and stared at the soft rise and fall of the boy's breathing; his arms lying loosely at his side. There was something odd about the smell of their souls, he thought. But they had smelled odd for days, now, and he couldn't place what had changed. Perhaps this was part of it all being fixed.

Sebastian's lips drew down. _No,_ he thought at once, viciously. He had bowed to the master's insistence to go through with this idea, but he had had misgivings, and those had not gone away. Instead, they only grew stronger with every moment, with every ominous _click_ of the second-hand. _If it should not work… if this should harm the young master further…_

Undertaker looked up towards him as though sensing his tension, his mistrust.

"How is the matter going?" Sebastian asked.

"Oh, quite well," Undertaker said, with one of his unreadable smiles.

 _Tick. Tick. Tick._

From downstairs, the phone rang.

"I should get that," Sebastian said. He closed the lid of his pocket-watch automatically and stepped out of the room, though his feet felt almost unable to move, and he felt a sudden murderous fury at whatever nonsense was being made to call his attention away from the most important task of making sure his young master was safe.

"Mister Sebastian—" Mei-Rin started, her high voice piercing through the phone line as soon as he picked it up, and Sebastian sighed, in weary irritation.

"What is it now?" he asked, his mind filling with dreadful visions of the manor blown halfway to hell, of the trees pulled up, of the sheer amount of _work_ that would be waiting for him when he came back.

"—there's a strange lady—" ("Man," came Finny's muffled voice, and then, "I think," slightly doubtfully.) "Some person wants to talk to you," Mei-Rin finished, though she sounded less than certain that Sebastian would return the sentiment.

"Person?" Sebastian asked, suddenly on guard. "Can you describe this person more clearly?"

"Um… lots of red hair?"

"Grell," Sebastian said with sudden vehemence. "Whatever he is doing there, _tell him to go away_."

"Give that here," a terribly familiar (unfortunately so) voice growled, and there was the sound of a minor scuffle with the phone, and a surprised squeak from Mei-Rin.

"Sebastian dear," Grell started. For Sebastian, this was two words too many.

"I am not in a tolerant mood," Sebastian said, in a clipped voice. "Unless you give me a very good reason not to, I will hang up this phone. Well?" he waited a minute, heard Grell's indignant squawk, then began to lower the phone toward the receiver.

"No—wait, Bassy–it's about the boy."

He paused, his hand still hovering. After a moment, he brought the phone back to his ear. "What about him?" he finished, deadly calm.

"You've got him with you, haven't you?"

"Of course I do," Sebastian said. "Undertaker is currently in the midst of trying to finish what you've started."

"Good, good—UNDERTAKER?"

"...Yes?" Sebastian asked, puzzled. "He said you'd spoken to him."

There was a sudden burst of interference from the other end of the line, as though Grell had gone to move while still holding the end of the phone and almost pulled it out of the wall. There was an embarrassed cough, and then Grell said, "Well yes, I did, but… you said he's trying to finish what I started? Trying to fix the boy?"

"If there's something wrong," Sebastian said tightly, "explain it."

"Well I went to him to see if he could use his bookmark on Ciel's record—you know the one."

"Of course," Sebastian murmured. It was actually an incredibly astute idea; it surprised him that the reaper had thought of it, and even pursued it.

"He said it couldn't do the impossible, however, and when nothing happened—"

"What did he write?" Sebastian pressed, insistently.

"I don't really remember," Grell dismissed the question, "—something about someone appearing and fixing him, I think. My own theory is that if the boy can't free the last tangle himself, no one can, but then…"

"...then, if he knows that, what is Undertaker trying to do," Sebastian finished grimly.

"Tell me where you are and I'll be right there," Grell said.

"I think you've done enough," Sebastian said darkly.

"Sebastian—"

Sebastian hung up the phone. He was angry, terribly angry, a clear, icy-hot rage. He turned from the phone and sped up to the room where Undertaker was with Ciel, pushing the door open so fast it slammed into the wall. Undertaker took a step back as he saw him enter, eyes glowing and a menacing darkness following him.

"So you've put it together," he said, watching Sebastian without any fear at all.

" _What have you done?_ " Sebastian said, moving quickly to the boy's side and curling one arm around his limp form. The heat of human skin beneath his cold hands seemed to burn its way through him.

 _I knew this was a bad idea,_ Sebastian thought. _I should never have let the master do something this foolish—I should have contacted Grell first—how could I make such a misstep?_ It cut him, deeply. Such a great failure, on the heels of all his other failures—how could he call himself a butler after this? How could he look himself in the eyes again?

"Oh, just a little something to make sure his and Markam's records won't ever be untangled," Undertaker said, with a chuckle.

Sebastian let out an unconscious sound, almost a gasp, and he looked down at his sleeping master. "No," he said, quietly, and then louder, "No!"

"You've lost," Undertaker observed, quietly. "You can't bear to eat his soul now."

Sebastian didn't even hear him. He was pressing his hands to the boy's forehead, as if the child had a fever, as though there might be some external sign of what Undertaker had done to him, as though it was some earthly illness the demon could help with hot water bottles, and blankets, and plenty of rest…

He was so still, so pale and quiet.

Carefully, Sebastian put Ciel back down on the bed, and stood up. He didn't spare another word for Undertaker. He just launched himself at the reaper, heedless of his own safety. The only thought in his mind was the overpowering urge to kill the reaper for what he had done.

Undertaker raised his hand, and his staff changed, becoming his reaper's scythe, blocking the blow that would have sent him careening into the wall. Sebastian ducked under the shining blade as it whizzed with deadly efficiency toward him, and tried to get within the reaper's defence. Sebastian was old, but so was Undertaker, and he knew more tricks than the other reapers Sebastian had fought. Perhaps, if Sebastian were at the very height of his strength, just fed, it _might_ have been a fair fight, but now, throwing himself at a death god of this caliber was nothing short of suicidal.

Feet moving, the swish of the scythe through the air, and their own breathing were the only sounds in that room… until the sudden buzzing of Grell's saw-scythe suddenly roared its way into the stillness. In a moment, the red-haired reaper had joined him.

"What do you think you're doing?" Grell said, in what seemed to be honest confusion. It didn't stop the wicked grin on his face, or the way he threw himself into the fight with Undertaker without waiting for an answer.

Sebastian couldn't help glancing at Ciel as they fought, although it cost him precious moments, slowing him down. So he noticed the moment the towseled head began to stir, and the boy's mismatched eyes blinked open in confusion, staring at the scene before pushing himself shakily to a sitting position.

A swing of Grell's blade protected him from a strike by Undertaker he hadn't noticed, and the red reaper glanced to where he was looking, his eyes widening in understanding.

"Leave Undertaker to me," he said, and Sebastian stared back in shock.

"Are you certain?" he asked.

"Of course," Grell answered. "I think this falls under the heading of 'Reaper Business'—and anyway, you have your young master to take care of." Grell began to take over the offensive as Sebastian tried to disengage, stepping back from the fight as Grell revved his weapon.

Sebastian watched, for a moment. The reaper was certainly eager enough—and he seemed to be holding his own.

"One thing," Sebastian said, before he walked away. "Make him suffer."

Grell turned back to him with the wide and bloodthirsty smile of the Ripper. "Gladly," he said.

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	29. Chapter 29

"Grell," William T. Spears sighed, as he materialized on the scene. Why was he not surprised? With a short, clipped movement, he extended his clipper-scythe between the two clashing blades, bringing the fight to a sudden stop as he stepped up between the two battling reapers.

"Cease this nonsense immediately," he said. Undertaker lowered his scythe to the floor, and Grell drew his back slightly, although he still kept it pointed toward Undertaker.

"What is going on?" William said. "This kind of in-fighting is not acceptable in the least—and you should both know that!" he finished, with a stern look at Undertaker, who, of the two of them, he would really have expected to behave better.

"In-fighting?" Grell cried, in annoyance. "He's a deserter!"

"The lady does have a point," Undertaker answered.

"See? He agrees with me!" Grell said. "It's obviously his fault!"

"Quiet!" William said. He sighed, then, and pushed up his glasses with the tip of his scythe. "So far, neither of you have even bothered to explain what is going on." William T. Spears prided himself on being hard to faze, but as Grell began to explain the situation he found his eyebrows climbing up his forehead in utter bewilderment.

"Is this true?" he said, turning to Undertaker.

"William!" Grell scolded. "You're turning to him? I'm one of your best agents!"

"You've been under probation for the better part of the last year," William said drily.

Grell stomped his feet, tucking his scythe back away into concealment so he could properly cross his arms. He scowled petulantly, bright green eyes boring daggers into William's.

"I admit it," Undertaker said. "But I don't regret what I did," he added. "I've saved Ciel Phantomhive."

William sighed again. This day was rapidly becoming longer; the only image he could bring to mind at the moment was the impressive pile of paperwork this mess would require, and it did not help his mood. He answered snippily. "It's not our business to 'save' lost souls; Ciel Phantomhive's soul was bargained away fairly and is not on the death list. —This is what comes," he continued, in a muttered undertone, "of emotional attachments." He turned a long-suffering look on Grell, who, to be quite fair, could not usually be said to suffer from an excess of attachment. The fling with that mortal woman had been an aberration, and look how _that_ had turned out… the woman dead, an agent on probation and in the most emotional turmoil he had ever seen the usually uncaring reaper possess.

"William," Grell protested, and he waved the reaper quiet.

"And if you think what you did is 'saving' Ciel Phantomhive's soul," he finished, turning to Undertaker, "it's despicable," he said. "But… the fact remains that you are no longer technically a reaper," he admitted. "I'm not sure what I ought to do with you."

"Whether or not he officially answers to us anymore, this breach of ethics falls under Reapers' jurisdiction," Grell pointed out. "It has to be tried by us."

"I understand," Undertaker said mildly. William looked at him sharply for a moment, but the reaper didn't show any signs that he would fight being taken in.

"Well then," he said awkwardly, not at all sure what to think about having to take what had become an almost legendary figure, to all the younger reapers, and one that he personally respected, whatever his failings, to a criminal trial; he grasped Undertaker's arm in his voluminous robe. "I'm very sorry, but you'll have to come with me."

Grell started to walk off, and William turned to him. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"My shift is technically over, you know, Will," Grell said, over his shoulder, "and I see no reason to work overtime just for _him_. I'm going to go home and rest."

William sighed. "Quite understandable, Grell," he said. Grell looked back at him, for a moment, and then began to turn away again. It was only then that the words that had been building in William's throat were pulled stiffly from his mouth. "You've done exemplary work today," he said.

Grell stopped short.

"Above and beyond your expected duties," William continued. "I will make a note of that on your record, of course."

Grell's face was hidden behind the bright red waterfall of his hair, so William could not see how he reacted, but at last he turned around again, a small and genuine smile on his face. "Thank you," he said, obviously touched. His pale skin was dusted with a slight blush that made him look much younger than he was.

 _I'm not declaring my love,_ William thought with what he knew was an uncharitable feeling, _I would have said that to any agent_ — but he stopped himself before he could say any of those things.

Grell flounced off after that, an obvious spring in his step.

William shook his head in exasperation. _If Grell was not so much_ trouble _all the time,_ he thought, _he might actually be bearable_.

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	30. Chapter 30

_What's going on?_ Alois thought, as he was roused to consciousness by the sound of fighting quite nearby.

 _I should think that would be fairly clear,_ Ciel thought as Alois opened his eyes and looked around. Sebastian and Grell were fighting Undertaker, but it was only a moment before Sebastian, having noticed that they'd woken, had hurried over to their side.

Sebastian looked at them with narrowed eyes while Alois glared back at him. Without a word, Sebastian picked them up and began to sweep his way from the room with such haste everything blurred around them as they made their way down the stairs and out of the townhouse. The sounds of clashing weapons could still be heard, vaguely, from outside; Alois looked up at the house and the noise, wondering what would happen to the reapers still within it. He couldn't help wishing rather that Grell would be killed horribly. It hadn't endeared him to the reaper when he had been attacked the day of his murder—Grell had been quite unpleasantly dismissive of him.

 _I can't imagine why,_ Ciel thought.

 _I would have assumed you'd think the same,_ Alois shot back— _he killed your aunt, you know_ —

 _Of course I know that,_ Ciel thought. And then, with a sudden, sinking worry… _you heard me_.

 _How could I not, with you shouting over there._

No, Ciel continued, with what seemed to be rising frustration, almost hinting at panic— _I can't stop hearing your thoughts. All of them_. They filtered back to Alois in disconnected waves: he was really cold. Sebastian still smelled nice! Grell ought to be a puddle on the floor by now. And:

Sebastian had once again played right into his hands. All he needed from Sebastian was a strand of his hair... and he was being carried through the air, back to the manor. His arms were twined around the butler's neck and Sebastian's long hair fell almost into his face with each leap.

 _That's what you've been planning all this time! You plan to bring Claude back…_

 _Of course it is,_ Alois thought.

 _I won't let you!_

 _You can't do a thing,_ Alois thought. It was the work of a moment to twist a single strand around his finger and pull. Sebastian looked down at him, for a moment, as he noticed the sensation, but Alois gasped in pretend fear—not so pretend as all that, the way his heart pounded, and his hands clenched even tighter around the butler's neck as though afraid he might fall. Soon enough they had come back to the manor, and Sebastian leaned to let him down only once they had reached Ciel's bedroom.

"I'm not tired," Alois said.

Sebastian smiled tightly. "You will be eventually," he said. "And I would rather you stay out of trouble until I am able to speak to my young master again." He stepped out of the door quickly, then, and Alois heard the sound of a key scraping its way through the lock on Ciel's door.

Alois kicked at the door and heard a low, amused chuckle from the other side, before Sebastian's footsteps walked off.

 _He seems worried,_ Ciel thought.

 _He'll be more than worried soon enough,_ Alois thought, as he opened his palm to reveal a long black hair curled up in his palm.

It wasn't hard to remember Claude's exact instructions—they had gone over it so many times in the dream. Ciel kept a spare bottle of ink and a pen in one of his drawers, and with that Alois drew the circle on the floor, every mark and symbol that would bind Sebastian.

 _Alois, you don't know what you're doing,_ Ciel said. _How can you trust Claude after what he's done to you?_

Alois ignored Ciel's increasingly desperate, angry words. At last the whole thing was done, and he put Sebastian's hair in its place. There was only one more thing he had to do. _They always know if you hurt yourself,_ Alois thought, as he raised the sharp end of the fountain pen to his wrist, above the black hair lying on the floor—and then he stabbed down, hard. He couldn't help the sudden gasp that left him from the pain, and he could hardly keep his wrist in place as he held it over the hair to drip his blood onto it. But, just as he had thought, Sebastian wasted no time, unlocking the door with all haste and staring in shock, as Alois spoke the words Claude had taught him.

And Sebastian screamed.

It was such an unexpected sound that Alois flinched, and scrambled back, the pen falling from his hand to roll across the floor as he watched the demon get pulled forward. The shape of the butler seemed to waver, filling with darkened blackness that rolled and surged like waves in a storm, as Sebastian stumbled forward. In another few steps, he wasn't even walking anymore, but was being dragged along, his feet no longer even touching the floor, more shadow now than man, a storm of black and sharp-tipped feathers swirling around him. At last he had been dragged all the way into the circle, and he fell curling to his knees; he stopped screaming, but the room began to shake, and his image flickered in and out like the changing of slides in a magic lantern—a person, and a monstrous, creeping _thing_ that pushed its way to the boundaries of the circle and stopped short, cut off by a barrier that seemed to enclose it entirely.

 _STOP!_ The sound of Ciel's voice in his head was almost overpowering; it had lost all semblance of rationality. _Stop hurting him! Stop it!_ Alois could feel Ciel throw himself against Alois' hold in his body, enough that his hands began to shake with the force. But Ciel couldn't gain control now! Alois pushed himself to his feet and took stumbling steps toward the door, unable to look away from Sebastian, and the noise of Ciel in his his head turned into an incoherent, sobbing scream. Every footstep took concentration; Ciel was trying to run toward Sebastian; every step away felt like walking against an ocean current. Several times Alois almost fell—but he kept the image of Claude in his mind, and he took each step. And finally, he had reached the still open door, and his hand scrambled at the knob—he took the last step from the room and slammed the door shut behind him, and stood shaking in the hall. His skin was covered with sweat and he felt as though he had been running; he was crying heedlessly. All he wanted to do was sit down on the ground and not have to get up, but the urge to get away from the room was even stronger. If he hadn't already known what he meant to do next he wouldn't have been able to think of it, but he turned and and walked as quickly as he was able down the hall, down the grand staircase and out the door into the manor grounds. He started to run only after he had spotted Finny in the gardens, and he was careful not to push himself too far; still, he was trembling and almost coughing in truth by the time he reached the gardener, and he burst into a fresh wave of tears as the young man startled and dropped his shears.

"Alois, what's wrong?" Finny asked, catching him as Alois' knees gave out beneath him and he fell onto the dirt of the garden path, breathing in and out slowly and staring down at the white bloodless knuckles of his clenched hands against the dirt, one wrist—with its old cuts hardly healed—clotted with darkening blood that poured with fresh spurts from the opened wound, the skin around it stained with ink.

"It's—Sebastian—" Alois said, "It's terrible… he's in the bedroom… please, Finny, you have to see," he said. He didn't want to go back there. He felt sure he would be sick if he had to go back there, but Finny would have to see if he was to be persuaded.

"All right," Finny said. "Can you get up?" he asked. Alois stared up at him, for a moment, in incomprehension. This wasn't on his script, and he could hardly think past the haze in his mind; he didn't know what to say, or why Finny was even asking.

"I can't just leave you here," Finny explained gently.

"No," Alois said.

"It's okay," Finny said. "I can carry you." He picked Alois up as though he weighed nothing and walked back up through the gardens and toward the house.

"What happened?" Finny asked, as they walked, but Alois couldn't think of another word, all he could do was shiver and cry into Finny's shoulder, and try to breathe past that odd catch in the bottom of his lungs that had become so familiar these past few days. At last they had come to Ciel's room, and Alois finally spoke, just as Finny was about to push open the door.

"Stop…"

"What is it?" Finny asked, looking down at Alois with a brave smile, although his fear was plain to see.

"I can't go in there again," he said quietly. So Finny let him down to sit on the hall floor, and looked into the room.

"He tried to hurt me," Alois said, staring at the tense, unreadable expanse of Finny's back. "I never guessed he was… that he was… a demon…"

Finny shut the door with a quiet click.

When he turned around, there were tears in his eyes. He seemed dazed.

"I thought… we need to get a priest," Alois said.

"Yes," Finny said, in an odd sort of way. "Yes… I guess so…" he seemed uncertain.

"He tried to hurt me," Alois babbled on, raising his hands in supplication. If he couldn't manage to convince Finny now, everything would fail. "He tried to kill me," he said. "I don't know what to do… please…"

"Don't worry," Finny said, bending to sit down beside him and holding his hand. "I'll protect you."

Alois took long, shaking breaths, trying to calm himself, while beside him, Finny started to cry.

"We should get a carriage," Alois said at last.

"Yes," Finny said.

Alois tried to stand up. It was harder than he thought it would be. At last, Finny stood up too, and the two of them walked hand in hand down the hall, away from Sebastian. Finny was quiet as he readied the carriage, and Alois insisted on riding in the carriage-box beside Finny as he drove.

"I know the way," Alois said.

"All right," Finny said. He took Alois' directions without hardly seeming to notice what they were, only rousing from the stupor he'd settled into when the carriage finally rolled to a stop.

"Wait," he said, quietly. "This is Trancy Manor…"

Alois scrambled down from the carriage and made his way to the gardens as fast as he could.

"Alois, what are you doing?" Finny said, as he hopped down to follow him; he looked around uncertainly before tying the horses so they wouldn't wander, though he didn't bother unhooking the carriage. It still slowed him. Alois was almost to the center of the garden, then, and he pushed his hands into the soft, crumbling earth.

It had begun to rain.

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	31. Chapter 31

Mei-Rin could tell that something was wrong the moment she stepped into that hall. From the path that lead to the master's bedroom, a sort of low-pitched, buzzing hum seemed to emanate, an uncomfortable almost-sound that shook its way under her feet. It seemed like it should be a noise, but all that could be heard was silence—gaping and yawning and deep.

"The carriage is gone," Bard said.

"I thought it might be," Mei-Rin said, taking off her glasses and sliding them into her pocket.

Bard swore. "What about Sebastian?" he asked.

"I don't know," Mei-Rin admitted. They walked, slowly, down the hall, and hesitated before the doorway.

"I can't believe Finny would've done something like that," Bard said, at last. And then, with more bitterness, "I can't believe we didn't notice."

The humming was louder. As they stepped through the door it seemed to shake the very air, to almost rattle it. The curtains were drawn, and the afternoon sun cast only a few orange streaks into the darkness of the room; the four-poster with its night-sky drapes were distorted shadowy figures; a scatter of dark feathers lay swirled across the ground. And beyond the bed—there—

A circle, drawn thick and ugly on the bare floor. A figure lay prone within it, his dark head resting on his arm, an expression of pain across his face. Bard cried out as they entered, hurrying over.

"Mr. Sebastian!" He said. "Are you all right—what is this—?" he looked down in confusion and dawning horror at the occult symbols around the circle. "What's this," he said, at last. "Some kind of magic?"

From the doorway, Mei-Rin gasped. "He found out?" she said, and she walked forward to join Bard near the circle.

"Found out what?" Bard said.

Mei-Rin stared at him in confusion. She wasn't sure what to say. Did Bard not realize, even though he saw it now? If he didn't, should she tell him? She was never good with these kinds of decisions.

Bard looked back at her, and then back at the figure in the circle. "No," he said firmly. "Sebastian's human, the same as the rest of us," he said.

"Well… what if," Mei-Rin said. Her voice almost failed her. She spoke quietly. "What if he wasn't?"

When she'd met him, that fateful day, when Sebastian had offered her a job, she hadn't yet been given her glasses. She could barely make out the blurry figure of the butler standing in front of her, although she knew she would always recognize the sound of his voice, like warm mulled wine on a winter's day. Her eyes had always picked up odd things, however. And what she saw when she looked at Sebastian that first time had sent a shiver down her spine. He wasn't human at all, though he looked like one.

But it didn't matter to her. All he wanted was her services with a gun, to protect a small, broken child who had already seen too much of the darkness. All he offered her was a chance to be someone normal, and ordinary, who got to wear a beautiful uniform and live in a fancy house with people who wouldn't look at her like she was a tool and a freak and nothing more.

It was hard to imagine, then. But she had never regretted taking this job.

She spoke louder, more confident. "What if he wasn't? Does it matter?"

Bard tore his eyes away from the circle and looked back at her. She could hear the way he shifted his weight, see the uncomfortable tension in his body. Then he sighed, and stood up straight.

"'Course it doesn't," Bard said. "He's one of us." He knelt down at last. "Hand me that pen?"

"What pen?" Mei-Rin asked, trying to look where Bard seemed to be pointing. She walked a few steps and almost crashed into something glass that was lying on the floor, and she froze in concern. "Oh dear!" she said, her voice going high in embarrassment. "Did I break something?"

"I suppose that works too," Bard said, as the spilled ink dripped across the carefully drawn lines of the circle, obliterating the pattern.

"Thank you," Sebastian said, in a voice that sounded tired and almost hoarse. He lifted himself slowly to his feet and stumbled, but Bard and Mei-Rin had stepped up, each catching one of his arms before he could fall.

"What happened?" Bard asked.

"Alois Trancy managed to capture me," Sebastian said. He looked down coldly at the ink-drawn circle, and his eyes flashed with a purple flame. "And I think I know where he's going."

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	32. Chapter 32

There it was, just as Claude had told him it would be. A little dirty, but the tin was still sound, the curling painted words familiar. Alois had never been good at his letters but he didn't have to sound them out to know what it said: _New Moon Drop_. This was the tin that had once held Ciel Phantomhive's soul, caught in the cursed crystal of his blue ring; Alois could still feel the distorted, dreamlike memories of that place, the odd, blurred memories Ciel had gained of his home in that bodiless space. And he could still feel the memories of _this_ soulless body, trapped in its own box for that long journey. His own memories of that time were flashes of pain and redness, impossible turmoil and betrayal, and Claude, reaching for him, again and again, and pushing his claws through his neck.

 _Even after that, you'll try to save him?_ Ciel's voice came, quiet, almost inaudible, in his head. He sounded tired, worn and frayed, and nearer to broken than Alois had ever heard him before. It made him uncomfortable, but he thought nothing back, only pulled the cover of the tin open. The rank smell of rotting things and old blood filled it. Inside, caught in the fine, silvery-white threads of the spiders who stopped their work and scurried away at his touch, was the heart, wrapped up and encased within each strand. It still beat.

Alois pulled it from the box, letting the tin roll to the ground beside him as he unwrapped the mummified, living heart. _Hold it near my seal,_ he thought. _But I am near. Where is he? Maybe it has to be nearer_. He brought it up to his mouth, watched the strange shape expand and contract within his palms, thumping dully, and then he reached out his tongue and licked up the side of the heart. It felt wet and it still moved, and as he licked it his tongue began to burn, first slightly and then with greater and greater strength, until he was crying with the sheer pain of it. But he held the heart close to his chest and took care not to drop it, and a sudden wind swirled around him. The heart began to squirm, to grow, unfurling like the bud of a flower, infested before it could even gain the life it was meant to have, and formed into a shape that pulled itself grotesquely this way and that, the muscles, glistening with blood, pulling and flexing, the skin, knitting its way over, until it had resolved itself into the shape of his butler at last, in a pressed suit and gloves and glasses shining, glinting wet from the rain, and still held tightly in Alois' arms. Alois watched, entranced, and when it was over the ground around them was strewn with shining webs.

"You're… you're really here," Alois said, his voice shaking, as he stared up into Claude's unfathomable golden eyes, and reached a shaking hand to his face.

Claude stared back at him, with an odd, faraway look.

"I wasn't sure you'd be able to do this," he said at last. "Maybe I have underestimated you."

Alois smiled tremulously. "But I did," he said. "I saved you. Don't you see? I meant it when I said you were my Highness," he repeated, again, although his voice trembled. "I'd do anything for you."

"I see," Claude said. "How interesting." His words were cold, but he didn't move to pull himself from Alois' grasp. Instead he put one hand to Alois' cheek, letting it rest there. Alois flinched, but leaned into the motion, and closed his eyes.

Claude only stayed, and brushed a thumb across his cheek, wiping away the rain that had pooled its way over his eyelashes and streaked its way down his face, a cold, biting rain that mixed with the hot flood of his tears.

"Alois," Finny's voice came, haltingly, from beyond the space of Alois' vision, "What did you do?"

Claude smiled, and his eyes left Alois' for the first time, looking over at the blonde-haired gardener. Alois pressed his face close, breathing in the familiar smell of _Claude_ , who would protect him and do anything for him. He flicked out his tongue, teasingly, and licked over the rough linen of Claude's glove, over the contract seal on his left hand, and felt a spark of pain fizz its way down his tongue like candy and bubbling water. He laughed, slightly, and looked over at poor, deluded Finny. Whatever caring feelings had come so easily to Alois when he had been lost in that terrible manor with nothing but Sebastian's shadow, it blinked out now like it had never been, and all he could muster in the face of Finny's shocked betrayal was a distant feeling of pity.

"I brought Claude back," Alois said, simply. "He's mine, you know. But Sebastian took him away from me, the way he took Luca."

Finny blinked down at them in bewilderment, sitting in the earth that was turning quickly to mud, amid the spiders' webs.

"Yes," Claude said. "Eternity is such a burden to bear alone. And you… made life interesting. I should have remembered that," he said. Alois sniffed and smiled up at him, before pressing a light and fluttering kiss to the side of Claude's throat, and on his cheek, and at the corner of his mouth. Claude turned his head into the kiss, pulling Alois roughly by the coat as Alois crawled his way into Claude's lap, and Claude licked his way hungrily into Alois' mouth, as though he meant to devour him.

 _Yes,_ Alois thought. _Do it now. Take my soul_ …

He wrapped his arms around Claude's neck, pulled his fingers through Claude's hair, dark and silky-smooth, like a child's hair; like spider-silk.

When he leaned back, as though to breathe, the look in Claude's eyes was almost warm.

"But," Claude said, "whatever has been done to you since we last spoke is even stronger than my own magick. Ciel Phantomhive and Alois Trancy… both, alone, are souls of exquisite decadence… but no demon could enjoy the tastes of your essences mingling together in such a vulgar manner," he finished coldly.

Alois stared up at him. He heard what Claude had said, but he didn't understand it. "What?" he asked.

"Yes," Claude said, pulling back, his face closing off, the strange tenderness that had been there a moment ago freezing over. His eyes became hard as he stood up and stepped back, brushing his suit clean and pushing his sopping hair from his face with one careless gesture. "It was interesting enough while it lasted, but there's no reason to keep it now." With one immaculate hand, he pulled the glove of his left hand free, letting it fall to the ground.

"Alois Trancy," he said, with his oil-slick voice, "I hearby break the contract. You mean nothing to me any more."

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	33. Chapter 33

_That's the magician,_ Finny thought. _The evil magician that Sebastian told us about, and Alois has brought him back_ … he didn't understand. Alois had been so sad, he'd asked for Finny's help, he'd needed Finny to protect him, but now he looked cruelly over, sitting curled up in the hands of this Claude, and laughed. For the first time, he reminded Finny of the young master—in one of his capricious moods, when he fancied himself in charge of everything. It made Finny's insides twist, and he shivered. He didn't know what he ought to do… and Claude's piercing, golden eyes watched him like they were sharing a joke. It made Finny's skin crawl. He was too petrified to move, having seen firsthand the magician's power, and he could only stand there and berate himself. Of course Bard and Mei-Rin had been right, when they said not to trust Alois. He was just a child, though, Finny thought. They hadn't seen how lonely he was. How much he needed a friend. Finny understood that. He understood not having a family, never having anyone on his side.

Alois looked away after he answered Finny's stammered question as though forgetting he existed at all, and he and Claude stared at each other again. Then the boy started to kiss the magician. If Finny had had other questions or any idea of what to say, they would have fled now. His mouth went dry with horror as he watched the two of them, one on top of the other, kissing in the muddy, spiderwebbed garden.

 _He looks like the young master,_ Finny thought, the realization stuck on repeat. Where was Ciel now? Was he still in there? And what had Finny done by letting Alois come here? Something terrible. He looked like the young master—his dark hair plastered down with rain, his buttoned boots digging into the ground, while the magician pressed his white-gloved fingers possessively around the child. With his glasses almost hidden between them and the shape of his face turned away, the tall, dark-haired man looked almost like Sebastian.

Finny choked, and started to cry. _Is Sebastian really a demon?_ he thought. _Does he really want to hurt him? Or… was I wrong?_

Then the man who wasn't Sebastian stopped kissing the boy who wasn't Ciel. He stood up, and in an instant, he didn't seem to like Alois at all.

"Alois Trancy," he said, "I hearby break the contract…"

Alois cried out, reaching one hand up toward the magician. Toward the demon, whose eyes flashed a slitted magenta, while all around them, the air seemed to grow still and quiet, as if waiting. When the magician stopped talking, the symbol on his hand seemed to burn away, and Alois reached up to his own tongue, shaking and crying and then crawling through the dirt, begging at the magician's feet, for him to reconsider, for him to take his soul.

"This isn't right," Finny said. He felt devastated. Even though the boy had betrayed him, it still hurt to see him like this.

"Of course it isn't," a soft voice said beside him. Finny started and looked over. Standing tall beside him was a lady in a maid's uniform with a lavender dress, and long, lavender hair that didn't quite hide the white medical patch over one eye. Something about the way she stood, and the soft, sad sound of her voice, reminded him of Angela; but while Angela had seemed small and delicate, like a gentle breeze might carry her away, this woman stood planted firmly to the ground. While Angela had had a bell-like laugh that made everyone stare, this woman didn't seem like she'd ever known what laughter was. And while Angela had seemed young, and innocent, this woman seemed much older than she looked, and everything about her was knowing.

"Who… who are you?" Finny asked.

"My name's Hannah," the lady said kindly. She looked over at Claude and Alois, who didn't seem to have noticed her yet, and her blue eye trembled with unshed tears. "The poor child," she said.

Finny swallowed, surprised that someone had put his thoughts into words in such a simple way.

"A demon's love delights in the destruction of what it loves," Hannah explained. "That's all that Claude can understand: tearing apart what is beautiful. It's the only way he can know it."

"That's terrible!" Finny said. He looked back at Claude, the demon-magician, who seemed even more sinister than before.

"Yes," Hannah said. But her soft voice and her tears seemed to be equally for Alois and Claude. Finny looked back at her, wondering at the strange look in her eye, and then he realized it was pity.

In a moment, the lady had strode forward, and both Claude and Alois looked over at her in surprise.

"Come, Alois," she said softly, reaching out a hand. "Get up."

"Get away from me, bitch," Alois spat, staying down in the churned-up mud. "I don't need you. What are you even doing here?"

"I've been waiting for you," Hannah said. "We've been waiting for you. Me and your brother, Luca. We've been waiting all this time."

Alois blinked the rain out of his upturned eye; it had gotten thick and spattering cold as the day drew closer to evening and the shadows began to fill the empty air. "...How do you know about Luca," he whispered, his face white except for his cheeks, which burned red with blood.

"Because," Hannah said, "it was I who made the deal with your brother to destroy your town. All he wanted was to make you happy… he loved you."

"No," Alois responded, shaking his head, sending water droplets flying sideways in the pounding rain. "No, Claude told me that Sebastian had…" he trailed off. Suddenly his eye narrowed in fury and he stood up, striding toward Claude, who was looking between Alois and Hannah with an expressionless face. "You told me that Sebastian had killed my brother," he said.

"I lied," Claude said.

Alois kicked at Claude wildly, and Claude only stood, and took the brunt of the child's anger. He still did not move, and his face told nothing.

"Why?"

At last, Claude smiled, very thinly, and the sight of his smile made Finny want to run; it made his knees quake. "I had my own reasons for wanting revenge on Sebastian Michaelis," he said.

Alois gasped. "So… so was I nothing to you, the whole time? Did you ever mean to help me at all?"

"I did everything that you ordered," Claude said, and his eyes flashed in warning. "It was a business arrangement, nothing more. I once thought that you understood that. You seemed so cold, so untouchable," despite himself, it seemed, the demon's voice had grown more strident. "You were everything I could have hoped for in a contractor. Nothing but cruelty, as frozen as ice. But then…"

"But then what?" Alois yelled. "I cared about you!"

"I know," Claude said. "I don't understand why."

Alois had started to cry again. "You're so stupid!" he said, in between his sobs. "How can I explain… loving someone?"

"I understand, brother," a warm, childish voice said. It seemed to hover in the air, and bring along it the scent of forget-me-nots and the bright summer sunlight. The voice came from inside Hannah's mouth, which gaped open impossibly wide, and Alois stared at her in shock.

"Luca?" he said, at last.

"Yes," Luca said. "I miss you, brother. It's so lonely here. I want us to be together again, the way we used to be."

"Let me see him," Alois said, grabbing onto Hannah's front and shaking her roughly. "Just let me see him…"

Hannah closed her mouth, and the presence vanished. "I can do more than that," she said kindly. "I can help you be together forever. All you have to do is make a contract with me."

"Forever?" Alois said. "All of us?"

"Yes," Hannah answered softly.

But whatever Alois was about to say was cut off by a sound that roared its way into the drumming of the rain, as a bright-coated figure with a whirring blade bounded into the garden, wild red hair streaming behind.

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	34. Chapter 34

"Well well, look at this," Grell said. "I remember you, demon," the reaper continued, baring pointed teeth at the lavender-dressed woman. It wasn't something Grell would have forgotten—the way that scythe sunk its biting way into her chest, and the red tunnels of blood that had painted the air afterward. "There aren't many things that can survive being run through with my scythe."

Hannah smiled. "I know," she said.

"Hmph!" Grell exclaimed, circling her warily. Whatever this one was, it was more than it seemed at first. For a short moment, the voice of reason in Grell's head murmured that it might have been a very bad idea coming here alone against two demons, one of whom had powers beyond the ordinary. But Grell put it aside. There was a simple enough mission, after all—kill Ciel Phantomhive, and so save the mangled souls from their continued existence on this earth. No one else was going to, and so that would have to fall to Grell. The hard things always did.

"Give me the brat, and I'll spare you my attentions again," Grell said. But Hannah's eye narrowed.

"No," she said.

Grell lunged forward, chainsaw outstretched, but Hannah grabbed the Trancy-Phantomhive boy and threw them both out of the way just in time.

"Stop!" a high voice shouted, and a young kid with bright blonde hair threw himself between Grell and the crouching figure of Hannah and the child. "You can't kill him!"

"Why not?"

Grell squinted. If one wasn't mistaken, one might think that kid was familiar… oh yes; he was one of Phantomhive's servants. Well, loyalty was all very well, but this was just ridiculous.

"What's your name, Finnian?" Grell said. The kid nodded. "I'm going to give you one warning," Grell said quietly. "Leave."

"Why should I?" the blond kid—he was the gardener, wasn't he?—cried.

"Because then I won't have to kill you too," Grell said, lunging forward to strike at Hannah and the child once again, who had stumbled to their feet; she had her arms protectively around him. For a moment, Grell felt a surge of pity. If anyone could understand a motherly instinct… but there were some things worse than death. Grell spun, dodging past the Phantomhive servant—at least that was the plan. But Finnian stepped into Grell's path, grabbing onto the uncovered blade of the death-scythe. He cried out as the blade bit into his skin, shredding through it, and Grell pulled back, eyes narrowing behind red glasses. _Fine. If one's_ very kind _warning was going to be ignored, there was only so much one could do_. Grell leaped forward again, this time aiming for Finny's chest.

Before Grell could do more than notice the odd sound in the air, bullets tore their way through forehead, chest, and throat. With the bare instant of time before they hit, Grell vanished the red coat that had once belonged to a lover.

 _Good, that's safe,_ the odd thought traveled woozily through, as Grell stared up at the pouring sky from a suddenly prone position, and coughed. These wounds would be a devil of a time to heal. Grell craned an aching neck to look at the body beside, the fair-haired gardener shot through with bullet holes.

 _What a shame,_ Grell thought.

But an instant later something odd started to happen... that body had begun to stir, vomiting up bullets.

 _Eh?_ Grell thought.

The kid stumbled to his feet, still sporting dozens of fatal wounds.

"Are you all right?" The other Phantomhive servants rushed over. It was the cook who was speaking, a machine-gun in one hand. "I tried not to get you, but…"

"I'm fine," Finnian answered.

"Really!" Grell exclaimed. "Is everyone here immortal?"

No one took notice. The gardener looked away, cheeks flushed with shame, as he said, "I'm real sorry about what I did… you were right."

"Hey," Bardroy said, after an awkward pause. "You meant well. I dunno what I'd've done if I found out about Sebastian that way myself."

"Sebastian…?" Finnian said, looking around wildly. "So, you know too? Where is he?"

"Right here," a smooth voice answered, and Sebastian—rather worse for the wear, if Grell did say so, but still as suave as ever, stepped forward, pressing one foot sharply upon Grell's ribs as he did so. Grell gasped and coughed, and Sebastian looked down, eyes twinkling red and the hint of a knowing smirk gracing his features, before he went to join the rest of the servants. After a few more minutes in which Grell decided enough was enough and left breathing behind, the reaper struggled to a sitting position and looked around. An incredible fight had broken out—Hannah and the child everyone was after were in the thick of it, being chased by all three servants, who seemed to be at something of a loss as to how to get the kid away from her without killing him; in another corner of the trampled, mazelike garden, Sebastian and Claude were going at it as though killing each other would be the greatest pleasure of their life.

"You still want Ciel Phantomhive?" Claude's voice cut through the gloom, incredulous and cruel. "When you'll get nothing for it but a muddy mess of conflicting tastes?"

"I said I wanted him back," Sebastian parried, holding up silverware against Claude's gold. "Not that I was going to eat him as he is."

"Then you'll never eat him," Claude said. "Whatever's been done to him is impossible to un-do."

"Perhaps so," Sebastian said grimly.

"And you don't care?" Claude laughed. "You're pathetic, Michaelis. You always were."

Sebastian growled.

Grell put a hand to an aching forehead—if only going home and having a nice long rest had been what was really meant when the reaper made that excuse to William—instead, there would probably be probation, if Grell was lucky. If Grell wasn't, well… anyway. The chief thing was that Phantomhive was still alive, and he shouldn't be. Grell stumbled up on aching feet and looked around, revving the death-scythe in warning.

For a reaper, even an injured one, it wasn't hard to keep one's footing, despite the rain which was pouring down from the increasingly darkened sky. The trees in the distance stood like eerie monoliths, black in front of fading blue, and everything descended into monochrome, lit by the occasional flash of lightning that turned the whole tableau into a frozen moment of daylight, before it descended once more into chaos. Grell kept eyes on Hannah and the boy. She was preoccupied—almost surrounded by the Phantomhive servants, they had ended up near the columned edge of the garden, a perfect spot to sneak up on her from behind. Only a few more steps.

Grell was just raising that death-scythe when another flash of lightning lit the grounds, longer and brighter than any other so far—at least, that was what it seemed to be at first. But there was no answering rumble of thunder, and the light continued, almost sourceless and filling the ground and the sky, blanking out the shadows. The death-scythe hummed to a stop, and Grell stared at it, confused; then gave it an experimental whack. It gave a weak noise of protest, but didn't move.

The light became even brighter, blindingly white, coalescing in a spot near to Hannah; everyone blocked their eyes and squinted, trying to make out what was moving in that brightness.

Wings. That was what Grell noticed first, and it was only a moment after that that the whole thing made sense. _An angel._ At least, nominally it made sense—but what was an angel doing here?

Another moment and the angel had become visible. It had lavender eyes and white hair, as the Angel of Massacre calling herself Angela had, but there the resemblance ended. There was something unearthly about the beauty of this angel that was frightening, and there was no veneer of nicety to cloak the power of this being. On a closer look, it was completely androgynous. Grell hadn't been impressed by Angela, but this angel more than made up for that disappointment. It was the most terrifying thing Grell had ever seen—more than even a demon; but Grell was still annoyed to find, on looking around, that everyone else in the garden had averted their eyes; Finnian cowered on the ground, Bardroy and Mei-Rin had pressed close together, holding hands like children afraid of the dark, and their knees were shaking. Sebastian and Claude, who had been fighting further away, had looks of indescribable horror on their faces, and it seemed that Claude had tried to run before being caught in Sebastian's vicelike grip.

Hannah kneeled on the ground, holding her hands protectively around the boy. Her uncovered eye was closed, and she was whispering a nursery rhyme into his dark hair.

"Really," Grell said, "what do you think you're doing? We can still kill it, if we all charge at once… probably…"

The angel gave Grell a knowing look, and Grell threw down the ineffective death-scythe with a huff. "Well?" Grell said. "We haven't got all night, you know."

The angel took a step forward, and the air around it seemed to waver, like it was being viewed beyond a fire. "Do not be afraid. I was called here," it said, in a single, clear voice, breathtakingly beautiful and terrifying.

"Huh?" Finnian's head rose a bare inch from the ground, and his arms, which had been wound protectively about him, uncurled a little. "But… none of us called you…" he looked around. "Did we?"

The other two servants stared blankly back at him. Mei-Rin shook her head.

"I was called here for the boys, Ciel Phantomhive and Alois Trancy." It turned its head unerringly to where the child was still hidden in Hannah's arms, and crouched down slightly, reaching out a hand. It pulled the boy from her grip, and Hannah moaned weakly.

"No," she said, but her voice faltered. "Please…"

Alois Trancy stared up, in bewilderment, at the angel, and the angel carefully picked him up in its arms. Then the lightning—was that what it had been this whole time?—had faded away, and both the angel and the child were gone.

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	35. Chapter 35

"Master!" Sebastian shouted; but the sound pealed off into silence. For the second time, the young master had been taken away by an angel. Beside him, Claude pulled away and straightened his glasses, giving him a smirk. "Well," he said. "It seems neither of us could have him after all. Who would have known heaven would take such an interest in the matter?"

Sebastian turned on his, his teeth bared in a snarl. "If you hadn't attacked me, I could have been there…"

"And done what?" Claude replied.

"Stop him from being taken, for one thing," Sebastian finished icily.

"You'd start a fight with an angel?"

"It's not the first time I've done so," Sebastian retorted.

"And that always turns out so well," Claude said.

Sebastian turned away bitterly. Claude's words had misinterpreted Sebastian's meaning—whether purposefully or not. The fight with Ash had turned in Sebastian's favor—something that Sebastian credited to his determination on Ciel's behalf, as well as the angel's unhinged state—but there were other battles, much longer ago, that had ended very differently. It grated, like rawhide on skin, that Claude knew so much of him, when all that Sebastian had ever done was try to forget his own past and remake himself in the present.

Eternity. A burden that could never be lifted.

"What just happened?" Bard's voice cut across the darkened garden.

"That gave me shivers, that did!" Mei-Rin added.

"Was that an angel?" Finny asked.

Grell was poking in some annoyance at the empty air the angel had disappeared into, but turned and looked at the servants as they spoke. "Yes," he said. He peered upwards at the black mass of the sky, strewn with the roiling pennants of the clouds that darted with a frantic pace across the moon.

The rain had lightened to smaller drops, fast-falling and massed.

"There's nothing left to do here," Grell said. He looked over at Sebastian then, as though suddenly remembering him, and blew him a kiss. "I'm sure we'll meet again, dear Bassy—" he said, and then paused, and continued with a thoughtful voice, "though… perhaps not." Behind the rain that sparkled off those red and pointed glasses, his eyes glowed an eerie green. Then he spinned around, and leaped off into the night, disappearing into the nothingness of the air.

Hannah stood up slowly, the ends of her lavender hair muddied from lying in the churned ground, her dress stained.

The servants hesitated, not sure if they should continue to attack her—but what was the point now? She merely turned away; and at last they made their way closer to Sebastian, Finny trailing behind the other two and casting frightened glances between Sebastian and Claude.

"What do we do now?" Bard said.

That seemed to make it real at once. Ciel Phantomhive was gone. In another moment, Mei-Rin burst out into tears, followed shortly by Finny. Sebastian sighed, his momentary annoyance overriding the deep emptiness that had already started to freeze its way over everything.

"We'll get him back, of course," he said, with utmost confidence, and the three straightened to attention.

"Yes, sir!" they called, saluting; they looked at him expectantly, fully believing that such a thing was possible, if he had said it was.

It must be. Sebastian just hadn't figured out how, yet.

Claude laughed. "You four," he said. "Servants to the end?" He flicked his wrist, his butler's uniform fading away as he donned a military uniform instead. He looked at Sebastian sardonically. "The demands of the aesthetic are over for me," he said. "Perhaps next time I'll find something more to my liking."

Sebastian doubted that Claude would. His standards ran to the impossible; already planning his next meal before he'd eaten the one in front of him. Well, good riddance.

"I shall hope not to run into you," Sebastian said.

"Likewise," Claude replied, before he, too, disappeared, into a formless smoke that hovered for a moment before vanishing with the smell of brimstone and new-fallen snow.

/

Hannah had always been good at waiting. She had perfected it to an art, and it had served her well. She cleaned the mud from herself with one gesture, already ignoring the others who had entered into the garden. Whatever the cost, she was not going to fail Luca and herself. They would indeed gain Alois Trancy's soul. She knew him very well, and she did not think an angel would be able to keep him, not now that he knew the truth about his brother. So she was not surprised at all when, hardly minutes later, the form of Ciel Phantomhive drifted into focus, falling until it touched the ground lightly. The boy's uncovered eye flew open in surprise, and met her own… and the clean, untarnished soul of Alois Trancy stared back.

/

(before)

Alois could hear the beating of wings all around him. The sound filled the space between the muffled air, and when his eyes opened he realized he was standing in the forest beside the Trancy manor, the place where he had spent so many contemplative days, where his fortunes had changed forever.

Where he had died.

There was no spiderwebs to guard him, no watching presence. Instead, there was only the beating of wings, growing steadily louder and seeming to bring a clear, cold wind along with it. He could not feel Ciel in his mind at all, though he was still in the other boy's body, and somehow, this made him afraid.

"I'm alone," Alois said to himself under his breath. He shivered, and began to cry quietly. As he did, the air all around seemed to shimmer as if endlessly refracted.

"You are not alone," a voice said, softly. "You never have been."

The blurred rainbow seemed to hum across the air, pulling itself together into a shape he recognized, though it seemed so strange. It was himself, but the other him had eyes like forget-me-nots and hair the color of snow. Alois gasped, his focus drawn to the huge and brilliant blue butterfly wings that came from the figure's back. They beat once again, and he realized that the incredible sound had been coming from them the whole time. The wings, delicate as they looked, were powerful and beautiful… and there.

"I always thought I had lost them," Alois said. He had dreamed, once, that he was a butterfly. But in his dream he had been trapped, a spider's sticky strands keeping him pinned and helpless.

Then finally he looked once more at the other boy's face. "Are you an angel?" he said.

"Yes."

"What do you mean I've never been alone?" Alois said. "I have been. When it gets dark at night…" his voice wavered, "I know I'm alone. I don't see anyone. I never have."

The other boy reached out a hand, clasping his own gently. The touch felt like nothing more than a breeze; insubstantial and unreal, and yet, from the place where their hands touched Alois felt something else, something hard to catch… it flitted in and out of his awareness. He recognized it, though. It made him feel like the end was not only darkness. What was this thing, that had kept him such companionship when nothing else had?

Oh... it was hope.

Alois sniffled, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "What will happen to me now?" he said, at last. "I'm dead, aren't I? I've really been dead for a while now. I don't know what to do."

"You can continue to live as you are, sharing another's body—but be warned that that is a long and dangerous path, full of hardship. Or you can pass on, as you were always meant to."

Alois thought, for a moment. He looked down at himself—at _Ciel's_ self.

"It doesn't matter what I choose? You'll still help me?"

The angel nodded.

"Then…" Alois said. He spoke in a very quiet voice, feeling almost guilty. "I think… that what I did to Ciel was really wrong. Is it?"

"I cannot tell you that," the angel said, gently.

"I think it was," Alois said, in a stronger voice, and as he said it again he became more convinced than ever that it was so. "I told myself I didn't care because it would help me get to Claude, but he never loved me, did he? He only pretended."

"He never cared for you more than he cared for his own aims. I think you have experience with that yourself."

Alois flinched. "Yes," he said softly. He felt like he wanted to cry again, and looked down, suddenly ashamed. But the angel kept his hand in his own and beat his wings, and a glitter of blue dust rose up around them, until they hung, suspended, in the air.

"What do you choose?" the angel said. "There is not much time."

Alois looked up again, and took a breath.

"Just tell me one thing. Can I really be with Luca forever, if I take Hannah's deal?"

/

(now)

"You said you'd make a deal with me," Alois said.

"Yes," Hannah answered. "What do you desire? Wish for anything at all, and you can join us."

What could he wish for? The only thing Alois wanted now was to finish the deal, to reunite with his brother at last. But… there was one thing. Perhaps.

"Give me a hug," Alois said.

He could feel a new contract form, a burning star tracing its way into his eye for a moment, and he walked forward a few steps, before leaning into her embrace. If he could remember what it was like to be in his mother's arms, he would have said it felt like that.

After a moment, she leaned down to just barely touch her lavender-painted lips to his. Her breath smelled like flowers, like that garden of forget-me-nots, and she seemed to be pulling him toward her, on a gentle summer wind. The sky was bright and clear, the grass went on and on, and far off, in the garden… he could see the face of his brother, watching him, with his wide eyes and his shining smile.

"You're here!" Luca said, running toward him.

Alois took a stumbling step forward, then another, and when he looked down, he realized that he was in his own body again, as it had been before his death. He was taller than he had been when he had last seen Luca, and his clothes were the ones he'd picked out as the new earl Trancy, but Luca knew him just the same. In another moment Luca had reached him, jumping up into his arms, and Jim picked him up and spun him around, laughing.

"I missed you so much," he whispered, as he held his brother—warm, and impossible alive—in his arms.

Luca looked up at him, and his small hands traced over his suddenly wet cheeks.

"Don't cry," Luca whispered. "We're together now."

"Yes, forever," Alois said.

"Did you like my present?" Luca said. "The way I killed the villagers, just like you wanted?"

Alois' breath caught. Did he? It was because of that wish that Luca had died, and yet, if he had never made that deal, they would not be here now… they would have died, perhaps, as children begging in the street, or they would be alive even still, trying to scrape a meagre existence, still looked down on, still kicked at and abused.

There was no way he could regret what his life had become. What he had made out of it, what he had built through his own work and stolen through his own cunning. He would not be Alois if that had not happened, and… and yet, that was who he had become. His own person.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, it was wonderful. Thank you."

And when Luca squirmed out of his grip, Alois saw that the endless field, purple with forget-me-nots, now had a castle, shining in the distance, its banners flying high.

"It's my castle…" Alois breathed. "Just as I imagined it!"

Luca giggled, and bowed with childish innocence of the meaning. "Yes, your highness," he said, and peeked up at him with a mischievous grin.

And they ran, hand in hand, toward home.

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	36. Chapter 36

Then it was done, and Ciel Phantomhive stared back at Hannah with a look ageless and sad. Yes—she knew that look. She had felt it herself for so long, without knowing what it was.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He pulled away, then, and his servants rushed toward him, the three hovering about uncertainly before he stumbled. In the rush to catch him at once, they all missed, and when they had picked themselves out of their awkward tumble the child was kneeling on the ground, his hand hovering at his black eyepatch. He breathed harshly.

"Where is Sebastian," he said at last, looking up, through the gloom.

/

(before)

When the light had stopped blinding him, Ciel found himself blinking at the edge of a high mountain. It was part of a whole range of mountains that rolled off into the distance, blue at the tips, where it was covered with mist and clouds, and below that, a brilliant, dazzling green, like growing things, wild after a rain. Grass and trees sloped their way down to a clear river, smooth and meandering icy-clear through the valley below. It was late afternoon, and the golden light of that last shining moment before darkness falls was gilding the edge of every leaf and painting a rich, intangible music over the stillness.

The angel was standing beside him, looking over it with a contemplative face.

Ciel realized, with a sudden surprise, that he could move his own body, that Alois did not seem to be here with him at all. But he wasted no time on relief before he was turning to the angel, a stony look in his eyes.

"I'll have to insist you take me back," he said. "I am not interested in what _your kind_ offers."

"I am sorry about your experience with Ash Landers," the angel said; only when it said his name it seemed, also, to be saying _Angela_ , and to be saying some other name, too, that wove itself between those two words, beautiful and yet discordantly broken. "But I am not here to give you the same opportunity."

"I don't care _what_ opportunity you're here to give me," Ciel said vehemently, "I don't want it."

"Really?" the angel said, turning to him, its lavender eyes piercing. "It's not very often that we interfere in the affairs of mortals, these days. I would not have come to you, at all, if I had not been called by a heart that cared about you, and a pen."

 _A pen?_ Ciel thought. _What is it going on about?_ "I don't know why you came," he said, less shortly, trying very hard to be civil, "but you really needn't have bothered. I don't want your help."

"So I can see," the angel replied, and looked back out over the valley. It didn't say anything else, and it did not move. The sunlight changed, imperceptibly, as Ciel stood there and watched; the reddish-purple hues of sunset dancing their way into the air. Scarlet and vermillion, and that spot of gold, still shining; other colors, too numerous to name, dancing on the undersides of the clouds.

"Why didn't you come for me then?" he asked at last, in a hoarse whisper of a voice. He closed his eyes, and remembered, with clear despair, those days, when he had wished for nothing else but to be free… and then to die. It had not happened, and those wishes had changed, to a wish for revenge, and to kill, and to hurt. He had prayed so many times, and those prayers had not been answered. He had looked for angels, and he had found only darkness. And to darkness, he had given his heart.

"Because we could not," the angel said.

"I called!" Ciel screamed. It was a small sound, in that endless, open space, but it trembled with rage and unshed tears. "I called so much! I never did anything but call to you, and you never came… not once…" He fell to his knees in the grass and screamed again, the sound tearing itself from his throat. It was a horrible, wounded sound, and it leaped from someplace deeper than his mouth, from someplace deep in his chest where it seemed to have been waiting, clawing at his insides for years.

The scream went on, and on, and finally, he ran out of breath, and it ended.

He felt better, he realized. Better than he had felt in some time. Stronger. The air was sweet and clear and warm, and his limbs were sturdy. For a moment, he wondered where he was, what place the angel had actually taken him too.

 _Is this place on earth? Or is it… somewhere else?_

(He did not want to wonder if it was heaven. He had turned his back on that long ago.)

"The option I will give you you is this," the angel said, and when Ciel looked back at it, he realized that it had sat down, to face him. The white robes that it wore seemed to catch the colors of the sunset as though it was made from it, and it seemed more substantial than anything he had ever seen before, its very _there-ness_ hurting his eyes. "Think on it carefully. You will not get another."

Ciel scoffed, weakly, in the back of his throat.

"I will fix what has been done to your memories. I will free your soul from the soul of Alois Trancy. But, before I do so, you will break the contract that ties you to the demon that calls himself Sebastian Michaelis. Your soul will forevermore be protected, unable to be consumed by any demon, but what you do with that protection will be up to you alone. Whatever the span of your natural life, your own choices will determine where you will go when you die. This is the most I can offer you."

Ciel swallowed. "And if… I say no?"

"I will return you now."

"And I will never get my memories back," Ciel says. "And you will not free me from Alois."

"Yes."

"It's not a choice," Ciel said. "It's not a choice at all." His throat was so dry, he could hardly speak.

"Choices are rarely equal," the angel replied. "Your choice to sell your soul in the first place was driven by desperation; freedom of the body, or an unending torture. That is how you conceived of it then."

"That's what it was," Ciel said.

"Everything worldly has an end," the angel said.

"That must be easy to remember, for you," Ciel said bitterly.

"No," the angel said, quiet. "Not so easy, even for us."

The breeze, that moved so gently over the mountains, carried a hint of night. The shadows had blued over every shard of grass, and the burning embers of the sun flickered beneath the gloaming.

"I made a promise," Ciel said. "A devil he may be, but Sebastian has always kept his promises to me, and I wouldn't break mine in return."

"I know," the angel said.

"But… if I refuse your offer, he still won't be able to have me. I'll be stuck in an unlivable life," Ciel said. He wished he knew what Sebastian would rather have him do, now. He'd said he'd seen something in the contract other than Ciel's soul, and yet the soul was what it came down to. Sebastian would not be satisfied with an endless deferment, and neither would Ciel.

Ciel realized, suddenly, that consideration toward Sebastian would not tip the scales. Either way something would be lost. But… with what decision could Ciel live?

 _If only I can apologize to him,_ Ciel thought...

He closed his eyes.

/

(Now)

The darkness was entire. The muck beneath his knees slid around, and his fingers, clutching against the dirt, were covered with mud, mud that splattered its way up the elbows of his sleeves while rain slid down the shell of his ear, under the silken fabric of his eyepatch.

As if from an endless distance, he heard the other servants talking: "He was just here!" "Where did he go?" "If only we had a blasted light," "Did he fall down? He was injured, wasn't he?"

His hand scrabbled fruitlessly at the the patch, as he shivered and tried to speak, his breath scraping its way inside him.

He knew, even before he pulled it off.

Sebastian wasn't there.

His eyepatch came away in his hand, fluttering to the drowned earth, and his eyes opened, two blue eyes as brilliant and clear as a cloudless sky, seeing only the darkness of the garden, the indistinct figures of his servants that blurred their way drunkenly around him. "He's gone…," he tried to explain. "He's gone… because I broke…"

His words trailed off into a long and rattling cough that shook every bone until he could no longer even sit. And then the darkness folded in from every side, like a muffled, grey smear, wiping away even the rain.

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	37. Chapter 37

He was cold. Even under an endless cocoon of blankets, with the fire banked up. Everything blurred and burned, and he was so cold. Someone was crying.

"...Lizzy?" Ciel said, weakly, opening his eyes. He could barely make her out in the gloom; though it must be daylight and the sun shone blindingly through the gaps in the thick drapes, touching her hair with gold.

"Oh, Ciel," she said, looking at him, leaning forward at the sound of his voice and pressing deliciously cool fingers to his clammy skin. If he had any energy at all he would push the blankets away, they were so hot, and yet it was all he could do to blink blearily up at her. _Why is she crying?_ he thought.

"Don't… worry," he said. Her eyes were bloodshot and her nose was snotty; it was very unbecoming. That was his first thought. His second thought was that she should not waste her time worrying on him. No—Elizabeth was meant to be happy, and free; anything that infringed upon her nature in such a way ought to face a number of bullets.

Sadly, it always seemed to be him that made her cry.

Lizzy only redoubled her tears, and it was some time before he could get any coherent story out of her. Apparently he had been brought back to the manor late last night, soaked and shivering from the chill and coughing terribly, and the doctor had been sent for. Today, he was still as ill. She didn't say it, but he could tell how worried she was: he must really be in a bad state. He felt like it. He felt worn out, and his bones ached.

Ciel chuckled, but the chuckles turned to coughs, and it was some time later when he finally said… "I wonder if the angel knew this when it spoke to me? 'The rest of my natural life'—might be no more than a few days…"

Sleep was calling him again. He slipped away.

Someone was still crying. It was quite burdensome, really, all the weeping and wailing that was going on. Couldn't Sebastian throw them out…?

"Whatever happens, Ciel, I will stay by your side!" Something was jingling softly, and sparkling. Ciel opened his eyes to glare at the offending nuisance.

"Soma," he groaned. "What are you doing here?"

"You…" Soma stammered, his brown eyes widening. "You remember me?"

"Of course I do, don't be daft," Ciel said. His eyes watered and his fingers shook as he tried to reach out a hand. "Have you got any water?"

"Here, lord Ciel," a calm, quiet voice said, and Agni leaned forward, a cup in hand. He tilted it slightly toward Ciel's lips and he swallowed as it dribbled down his throat.

"Ciel, what happened?" Soma implored. "None of your servants would tell me a thing. Why were you out at night in the rain? What's been going on? And where is Sebastian?"

"Hush," Agni said urgently. "Don't burden Ciel will all these questions now."

"I was kidnapped," Ciel said. "It's a long story. Not very interesting…" he coughed again, and pulled his blankets up to his chin. "It's so warm in here," he complained.

The sun had gone down, he thought. And the morning light was streaming into his eyes.

Ciel shivered. He felt worse now than he had before. He began to suspect more than ever that this time, he might not make it.

Well. He had never expected to live long.

Someone was standing by his bed. At first, he seemed to be Alois, looking out with a frown somewhere Ciel's eyes couldn't follow, but as he moved closer Ciel realized that the person standing beside his bed was himself… gazing down at him with two startlingly blue eyes.

"Hello, brother," the phantom whispered.

"You're not real," Ciel whispered. He looked around, but no one else was in the room. The quiet had descended.

The lips, that were so like his own, quirked up. "Maybe not," he said. "But does that mean I can't say goodbye?"

Ciel couldn't answer, but the other him seemed to know everything he wanted to say, anyway; right past the careless dismissals down to the apology and longing deep within him. He leaned forward, disturbing not even the shadows, and Ciel thought he might have kissed him, once, on the forehead… but in another moment, even that mirage was gone.

He was alone.

The daylight dwindled, and the minutes blurred.

Sebastian was sitting by his bed.

"There you are," Ciel said, between coughs, as Sebastian took a cool wet cloth and pressed it to his forehead. "I've been waiting, you know."

"My apologies," Sebastian murmured. The night air was thick around him and everything was silent. "I was somewhat shocked by your decision," he admitted at last.

"It was the only way," Ciel said. "I had to get him out of my head."

"I understand," Sebastian replied. "I have never doubted the lengths you will go to."

The pocket-watch, attached to his coat by a shining chain, was ticking.

Seconds and perhaps hours passed. The hands chased each other around the white moon, trying to catch up with each other, waiting for midnight.

"Stay with me…" Ciel said. He could not get out the rest.

"Until the end," Sebastian said, quietly.

.

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	38. Chapter 38

It was on a whim that Sebastian had slipped back here, or so he had thought. Wondering what had happened to his former contractor. Perhaps hoping to see him once more. He was not so very surprised to find him ill, but it disquieted him. The child was half-delusional and his skin burned to the touch, almost hot enough to kill. He hadn't planned to let himself be seen. He had planned to slip away after only a moment. And yet the sight of Ciel's suffering seemed to necessitate an answer.

Sebastian reached to the wash-cloth beside the bed, dipping it in cool water, and began to run it gently over the boy's face. His other guards had fallen asleep, at Sebastian's silent urging. There was no one else awake in the dark house.

Ciel noticed him. He did not seem surprised; but whether that was the fever or his true thoughts Sebastian could not tell. He asked only one thing of Sebastian, and that was the one thing Sebastian could not refuse.

He asked for Sebastian to stay with him.

Of course he would. He would stay until the end.

The end was racing toward him steadily, with the fluttering of the child's heartbeat and the way his searching breaths had subsided to faint, wheezing rattles. It would come before dawn.

The small moment of lucidity had faded; and every sign of consciousness. Sebastian sat on the chair pulled up to his bedside, and ran his gloved fingers through the child's sweaty hair. He had never gotten around to changing out of his butler's aesthetic. There was no hurry, after all. The child for whom it was all made would die soon enough, taken away by reapers. That brilliant, beautiful soul that was already turned toward hell.

There was some irony in the fact. Yet Sebastian couldn't find any amusement in the thought.

What was the point? What was the point of any of the desperate measures they had undertaken, if it would lead to this? The soul was freed, but it was freed only to die. The endless possibilities within it forever to be unrecognized. It put a bitter taste on the back of Sebastian's tongue, and it made his hands tremble. He watched his own reaction curiously, and waited, one hand holding a pocket watch that no longer had ordinary numbers on it, counting out the measured increments of the day: there was only one number left, at the very top, and that was zero. And the hands inched themselves steadily closer, as the boy's heartbeats flickered, and the dark drew deeper about them.

On the night of their first meeting, Sebastian had offered health as part of their deal, but the boy had valued loyalty more. Clever child.

There was no deals left between them: Ciel had broken every one they had.

And as the night winds hovered outside the window, their groping fingers reaching to get in, and the candle in its holder burnt down to a stub, Sebastian began to wonder…

 _If there is no deals left between us, might that mean there is nothing preventing me from saving him?_

It was an odd thought. It coalesced behind the looming shadows of the chair and wound itself around his throat. A demon could not give without something in return. ( _Could_ not?)

A demon would never even think of it. It went against all reason and common sense. There was nothing to be gained from the action. Nothing at all.

But... was it _truly_ impossible?

The thought itched at him. It tore itself up his chest. It teased him with the thought of not trying, of always wondering what would have been, if he had done so.

 _Have I not always done the impossible for him, if he has ordered it?_

(But he has not ordered anything.) (Sebastian prided himself on anticipating his master's needs.)

(But he is not your master anymore—)

(And yet)

The curiosity was too great. Demons, of all things, were never immune to temptation. And the thought was… indeed… tempting.

The darkness began to flicker, into something even blacker and smoother than night, and a storm of feathers began to rise, sweeping their way dizzyingly about the bed, like a curtain. Tendrils of darkness reached out to every window and door, stopping up noise and light entirely, creating a vacuum of emptiness within the room. And within it all, the figure that still looked uncannily like a butler crawled with strange and impossible movements onto the bed, its clawed hands shredding the sheets as it clutched at them. Its glowing eyes were the only points of light in the darkness, and from all around it those darkened tendrils floated, almost aimlessly, as if on a calm sea. The pocket-watch, discarded on the floor, ticked one more time toward zero.

And the demon breathed in. It breathed in the foul, sickroom air, and the beads of sweat on the child's body. It breathed in the sickness that stank its way through the child's mouth, until the boy's eyelids began to flutter and he gasped for breath; two blue eyes cut their way through the gloom. He looked straight at Sebastian, the sudden thumping of his heartbeat the only telling of his body's natural terror, and spoke quietly.

"What are you doing?"

"Let me save you," the demon replied. It would go ahead regardless. But.

"Of course," the boy replied, although his face was twisted in confusion. "You know I have always been yours…" he breathed out, as the demon leaned down, and the rest of his words ( _to do with as you please?_ ) fell away under the darkness that poured itself down his throat like air. The boy choked on it, and it spilled over the corners of his mouth like ink, but he didn't pull away. No: his hands scrabbled up to clutch at glossy-feathered hair, to twist his sharp nails into porcelain skin. While any sane being would be running, this boy leaned closer, his eyes open, and staring at the beast.

 _Not anymore_ , it thought, with a voice like a man puzzled at his own bereavement, and unrecognizable to itself.

/

There was something about those burning, slit-pupiled eyes that seemed to hold such sadness, Ciel thought. Sebastian ran a nail along the corner of his spit-strewn mouth as he leaned closer, the darkness of him holding fast about them so that there was nothing else in the world. The burning of the fever inside him had seemed to stretch to every part of his body, which tingled as if with a shock of cold water. Sebastian did not take his soul. He couldn't: it was impossible. Ciel was still alive, and every moment he felt more and more alive, almost dizzy with it. It seemed too much to be allowed, as though he might lose himself with any unhurried movement, as the feathers that spun their way about him scraped his skin like knives, letting out blood. Sebastian unbuttoned his shirt, and pressed his lips down his collarbone and onto his chest, sharp and soft kisses with the hint of fangs. He did not seem to know what he was doing anymore, but neither did Ciel—he was reaching with both hands over Sebastian's bared shoulders, trying to pull him closer to himself, until there was no space between them at all. He could hear his own breathing, panting and heavy but without a catch in it, surer every moment; and the hollow, growled rasp that spun its way from Sebastian's chest. He could taste a sudden tang of salt, and realized with a shock that he was crying. He didn't know why—he felt anything but sad; impatient and ecstatic and confused.

Sebastian's skin tasted like sweat. He could feel the press of a heartbeat under his hand, so seemingly human, its soft and steady beats unerring and measured. Sebastian leaned his head down beside him, cradling his face in Ciel's shoulder, and Ciel ran his hands down Sebastian's back, over and over, as he realized that Sebastian was trying to master his own breathing, which had turned hitched and ugly at some point. His breath was still hot and dry, whispering across Ciel's tears. Sebastian held him, gently, as though afraid that he would break, or as though he were afraid of breaking, and Ciel, who felt only sure and calm, allowed him. Around them, the feathers had stopped spinning, and hovered, gently, on the air, brushing past them with the softest touch along every limb, which made that tingling and waiting rise ever higher. Sebastian kissed him gently, unhurriedly, on the lips, and Ciel returned the motion, curious, feeling a wave of drowsy happiness that seemed to fill him with warmth. He thought that he must be blushing, which seemed such an odd reaction to have now, after whatever it was that they had just been doing, and Sebastian chuckled gently against him.

"Why did you come back?" Ciel asked at last.

"You have always had an appalling sense of self-preservation," Sebastian said. "Someone has to make sure you don't accidentally kill yourself, and to be quite frank, my faith in your other servants' abilities doesn't run to quite that level."

"Well. All right," Ciel said. It didn't really explain much, and yet it was enough, for now.

Sebastian lay down beside him, one arm still curled above him, his fingers holding Ciel's, and spoke. "That took… quite a lot out of me," he said at last. "More than I expected."

"What did you expect?" Ciel asked. "Does this sort of thing usually go differently?"

"I have to say I have no idea," Sebastian said at last. "I've never done anything like this before."

"Oh," Ciel said. He was still staring up to the ceiling, wondering at that, when he heard Sebastian's breath slow and even out, and when he looked over, he saw that the demon was asleep.

 _One of us ought to move_ , Ciel thought. _Probably him, since this is my bed_.

But on further consideration, there was nothing that couldn't wait.

.

.

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	39. Chapter 39

**A/N: Wow. So, I started writing this story in March of this year, and I've finished uploading it all by December, with some edits along the way :) That feels special, somehow.**

* * *

The next morning, Ciel was awakened to the sound of people trying to pound down his bedroom door, and he pulled his covers up over his head, having no desire to move.

"I tell you, there's no reason why it shouldn't open," Finny's voice came muffled from the hall, during the ringing silence that fell after he had apparently stopped hitting the surface.

"What should we do now?" Mei-Rin asked. "If the flamethrower didn't work, it must be some awful strong magic."

"We gotta climb in the window," Bard replied grimly.

Ciel looked beside him, where Sebastian was opening his eyes with an annoyed sigh. "Will they never give me a moment's peace?" Sebastian asked the ceiling.

"You ought to answer them," Ciel replied.

Sebastian sat up. His trousers were wrinkled, something Sebastian fixed with a distracted wave of his hand, and his shirt and vest were lying somewhere on top of the covers. Ciel had a vague thought that that might have been his fault. The butler's coat, interestingly enough, was folded quite neatly on the chair.

In a few seconds, Sebastian had made himself presentable and was striding firmly to the door, opening it just a crack and speaking very fiercely. "What do you three think you're doing?"

"Mister Sebastian!" Ciel could almost picture the looks of incredulity on the servants' faces.

"We thought you'd disappeared."

"As you can very well see, I haven't." Sebastian said. "Now do the young master the favour of dispersing _quietly_ , and allow me to wake him up; he is feeling much better this morning."

With a few mutters, the others wandered off, and Ciel lay back with a groan.

"There's no point in regrets, young master," Sebastian said. "You're up now, so you might as well get ready. I'm sure you will be hungry soon."

"Fine," Ciel said. He really did feel better, though, and strangely well-rested, though he did not think he had gotten very much sleep last night.

Sebastian looked for a suitable outfit from his wardrobe, and as he pulled Ciel's nightgown from his shoulders Ciel realized that the injuries he had recently acquired were gone: the cut on his wrist from the pen that Alois had stabbed him with, as well as the scratches he had gathered before that. "Hm," Ciel said. "You were quite thorough in this _healing_ business."

"It was somewhat inexact," Sebastian admitted. "I wished to make certain of your wellness, and it seems that the effects were generally applied."

"What will you do now?" Ciel asked, as Sebastian buttoned his shirt. "Am I right in thinking you intend to stay in service to me? And if you do," he continued, "how will that work with you having to eat? I have no wish to deprive you any further."

"I can survive a little longer without food," Sebastian said blithely. But he continued more soberly after a moment. "I will have to make another contract eventually. Most do not last as long as ours…" he trailed off, looking down oddly at the eyepatch in his hand, before replacing it quietly on the bedside table.

"They've seen you without already," he explained. "And I'm sure you can pass it all off as a miracle."

"A miracle," Ciel said thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose it was." He looked at Sebastian as he spoke.

Sebastian smiled thinly, but his eyes were dark.

"I don't think I apologized to you," Ciel said at last. "I meant to."

"Apologies are not necessary," Sebastian said smoothly. "It would be quite unwarranted."

"Nevertheless," Ciel said, remembering Sebastian's words to him, only a few days and so long ago. "It pleases me to give you one."

Sebastian chuckled a little, drily. "Indeed," he said, but some of the darkness had left his eyes.

As Sebastian slipped the stockings up Ciel's legs, Ciel continued, trying to think through the business of it. "Eventually…? Should I be looking to find a new butler within the year, or…?"

"The year?" Sebastian said, sounding almost scandalized. "Young master, if I say that I will stay, and then you continue to plan for my imminent departure, I don't know what I ought to assume."

"Then tell me what you mean," Ciel replied, patiently. "A little notice is all I ask, here."

Sebastian hesitated. "You understand," he said at last, "that I was always prepared to let this contract extend to whatever length it would. Even a human lifetime is nothing, in eternity. Why should I seek to cut down that time that is already too short?... that is, if you'll have me."

Ciel was so surprised by these words that he hardly noticed that last addition; but something about the nonchalance of Sebastian's tone called attention. "If I'll have you? Why wouldn't I have you?" he asked.

Sebastian made a noise in the back of his throat—it sounded almost amused, except for the palpable bitterness it carried. "I proved unequal to the task you set out for me," he explained. "I failed. Perhaps you wouldn't want such a demon at your command."

"You saved my life," Ciel said. Sebastian looked down, took Ciel's foot in his hand, and was suddenly very intent on sliding on the buckled shoes. Ciel changed his tack—he wasn't sure what to make of that yet himself. "I know I have expected perfection of you in the past," he said, slowly.

"And rightly so," Sebastian interjected.

"No," Ciel said. "It was wrong of me to do so; childish. It must be hard to realize, being so powerful… but there will always be instances where one makes a mistake; or where there was nothing more that could be done. How could I expect that phenomenon to be confined to humankind alone?"

"I really think," Sebastian said, in a somewhat wounded tone, but he did not continue.

"Do you disagree?" Ciel said. When Sebastian didn't answer, he added, "You did as much as was in your power to do, as did I. And that is the only thing we can expect of another."

They went downstairs at last, and Sebastian departed to oversee whatever Bard was doing with the breakfast. It felt odd, to Ciel, to sit so blatantly with his eye uncovered, though the sight had returned to it and it no longer bore any mark. He could hear the servants whispering to each other in the hall. _I don't want to know whatever it is they've found to gossip about now_ , Ciel thought. But a moment later that was pushed out of his head as both Elizabeth and Soma burst their way into the room.

"...Damn," Ciel said.

"Cieeeeeeeel!" The combined voices of his fianceé and the prince were shrill and excited, as both took the opportunity to bowl him over with impromptu hugs, almost knocking him out of his chair.

"I was so worried," Lizzy cried, while Some berated him about having had the gall to fall ill.

"Yes, sorry, I'm fine now so you can get off me," Ciel said. But it was only when Sebastian entered with the food that they finally stopped hanging off him to go to their places at the table. Neither would let up about wanting to know what had happened, so Ciel told what he thought was a fairly believable story about his kidnapping, with added drama by Sebastian's occasional interjection.

Ciel didn't get another moment alone for hours after that, and was trying very hard to keep from yelling in the presence of a lady, when Agni, who seemed to notice Ciel's fragile nerves, dragged Soma off to do who-knows-what.

"You look a bit pale," Lizzy admitted, when most of the noise had vanished, and they both sat awkwardly in the parlor, side by side on the pale chintz settee. "I keep forgetting you just got better and might not want so much excitement."

"Indeed," Ciel said, although he didn't add that he could not actually think of _any_ time when he had looked forward to the amount of excitement that came when both hyperactive acquaintances were in the same room.

"But," Lizzy continued, looking at her hands and biting her lip, "I was wondering… did you really tell us all the details of what happened? It doesn't quite seem to add up, you know."

Ciel opened his mouth to assure her that all the details were indeed as he had described, when Finny's voice, travelling loudly through one of those sudden hushes that sometimes falls, said, "But what about the fact that Sebastian is a demon?"

"Quiet!" came Mei-Rin's even louder shriek. "Someone'll hear, there are guest in the manor!"

Lizzy looked over at the open doorway in surprise. "Um… that was odd," she said, when the servants had dashed away.

"Very," Ciel said. "I couldn't tell you what goes on in their heads sometimes."

Lizzy gave him a small smile. "Yes," she agreed. "And… if you'd ever like to tell me what really happened," she said, taking a sudden breath as though steeling her resolve, "you know I would believe you? And I wouldn't mind. Whatever it was."

It seemed an insult to keep denying it now, so Ciel only replied carefully, "thank you, Lizzy. If I ever don't tell you anything… you know it is only because some things aren't fit to be spoken of."

"And some things fester, until they are spoken," Lizzy returned solemnly. "I had… a long occasion to think, this past year. And I know some secrets must remain secrets, but I don't think it's wise, to keep more than necessary. They wear on one, rather."

"You're right," Ciel said, at last. Wasn't that how this had all started? With the secrets Sebastian had kept from him and his own suspicions leading them both into a trap? For the first time, he regarded Lizzy with some surprise, thinking that some time during the past year she had grown up, and he, stuck with only an emptiness in his memories and a missing span of time, had not noticed.

"If you really wish to know, then," Ciel said, "I will tell you something. Not all."

"All right," Lizzy replied.

Where should he even begin? There were so many secrets he had kept from her. "That time I went missing," he said, "I never told anyone of this. I'm sure you may have suspected. But… I was kidnapped, by the kind of people who have no interest in ransom, no regard for human life, and who want to do with children... only terrible things." He trailed off, quiet for a long moment. "Sebastian rescued me from there. For a very long time, I could not bear to part from him. But we have been discussing, recently, the prospect that he may at some point move onto other employment."

"Not Sebastian!" Lizzy gasped. "But, he seems so loyal to you…"

"Loyal?" Ciel asked. _What a ridiculous notion_ , he thought. Lizzy wasn't to know that he was a demon; and demons could know nothing of loyalty. Hunger drove their every action.

Except that recent events had proved that wrong, on some count. Ciel was still not sure which one.

"Maybe," he said. He thought again of those words of Sebastian's, when he'd said that he would stay… perhaps even until his eventual death, be that a span of years away. Had that always been a fair trade for the demon? And could it really be, still, when he would get nothing out of it any more? Or would he? Something had driven Sebastian to keep the contract, so he had said that morning of Grell's intervention. Something beyond the soul's becoming his; though he could not say, then, what that was. And there was the fact that Sebastian had saved his life. He didn't know what to make of it; but Lizzy was watching him expectantly, as though waiting for him to say something. "Perhaps you're right, after all," he said at last. It was as much of an explanation as any.

Lizzy laughed. "Of course I am, silly," she said; she flounced closer to him; the uncaring impropriety of it made him cough to hide the redness of the blush that overtook his face. Her legs were close enough to his own that her feet, kicking out, tangled with his own shoes; and she leaned against him, closing her eyes. He reached out, hesitantly, and curled one arm around her shoulder. _She is still here, too,_ he thought; the suddenness of it overwhelmed him. _They are all still here—and so am I._

And then—though he no longer had a mark that told him unerringly when Sebastian was near—he found himself looking toward the door, and was not surprised at all to find his butler standing there upon the threshold, holding a tray with afternoon tea. He met that familiar gaze with his own, and puzzled over the expression he found there; the enigmatic curl of his smile, and the amused, soft sparkle in his shining eyes.

 _I don't understand,_ he thought. _And yet… I'm glad._

 _._

 _._

 _._


End file.
